Kenya is blessed with a large — and growing — youthful population, with data indicating that close to 14 million people are aged between 18 and 35 years. That is about one if every three Kenyans. However, as is with all blessings, the flip side of the demographic dividend is that it also carries within it the risk of being a curse if not well harnessed.
Many of these youths feel disenfranchised largely because they do not have opportunities for sustainable livelihoods although the government has been shipping them out to the Middle East by the plane loads. However, the numbers being evacuated to work abroad is but a drop in the sea of humanity that remains behind pursuing elusive self-advancement.
To let off their frustrations, this demographic has been holding cyclical protests that are now verging on social anarchy, in part because they always end up in violent clashes with the police and unwarranted wanton destruction of private property, including looting of businesses in urban centres.
This, clearly, is not how to run a country and something needs to give before private individuals begin to take up arms to protect their investments and push back against the violence that is growing more costly by the day.
My view is that rather than engage the youth in the streets every week, the government ought to come up with strategies that will keep them gainfully engaged especially by facilitating an environment for private investors to create jobs on an industrial scale.
The idea of giving public money to youthful individuals directly will not always work because not all youths are entrepreneurial and also because the temptation to squander “government money” may be too high for them to resist given that it looks more of a bribe than a hand-up.
Instead, a more practical option would be to harness the power of the private sector to invest in technology-driven manufacturing, value addition for agricultural commodities and infrastructure development projects to keep the youth mentally busy, physically exhausted and financially empowered.
This will require the government and its spokespeople to engage in less verbal exchanges and invest more in tangible actions that translate to opportunities through which the youth will be matched with jobs that meet their respective brain and brawn capacities so that each is engaged according to their capabilities.
In the same vein, there will be need for the ministries responsible for sports, gender, youth affairs and social services to revisit the old model investing in amenities at social halls, libraries, football and other sports activities, theatre and so on to create opportunities for the youth to creatively vent their anger and release their pent-up adrenaline through socially and politically acceptable engagements.
For instance, there is no reason why four years after its closure, Uhuru Park has not been re-opened to the public, critical as this venue is for relieving the stresses that come with living in the capital.
The one thing that the government ought to stop doing is appearing to be in a chest-thumping contest with Gen Z. At the end of the day, the young people have nothing to fear except fear itself, and nothing to lose except their chains.
They are not even afraid of dying on their feet in their confrontations with the symbols of State power, particularly the police. It is, therefore, both foolhardy, and self-defeating, for government honchos to play into Gen Z hands when there are so many other options at the disposal of the State machinery.
mbugua@nairobilawmonthly.com
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