The youth in any society are the sustenance of the community either by them being the future leaders or materials for continuity. They are like what cuttings are for a sugarcane farmer. They come from the sugarcane but expect to take over once mother sugarcane has gone. One thing we fail to notice is that youthfulness is a stage. Within no time the youth grow into men and women or better, parents. The youth do not have a lot of time to be youths; rather they have an ultimatum to end their youthfulness, by nature. Some youth realize this and also discover that there are thing done better as youth than as youth alumni, like starting to build their financial bases. That’s why some youth start up (or seek to start up) businesses. This however has been an uphill task for many youth for various reasons.

The greatest challenge the youth face in pursuit of their entrepreneurial ambitions has always and still is the issue of capital.  Other challenges include lack of knowledge of how to transfer the great ideas in their minds into physical running entities, lack of skills to start or run businesses, misconceptions about business and also the predominant employment mentality, to name but a few.

Not very many people have good things to say about the government but the youth can appreciate the Kenya government’s effort of mitigating the effects of this grand challenge. This is by introduction of the kshs.1billion Youth Enterprise Fund some years ago.

However, very few of the targeted youth, who make a majority of the country’s population, are aware of this provision or those who know cannot access the organizations used by the government to distribute these funds. Some also cannot meet the minimum requirements to get these funds due to lack of collaterals.

In some communities the obstacle is the attitudes towards loans. In some areas of Western and Nyanza province very few people would easily seek a loan to start or expand their businesses. Loans have been made to sound like tools used by financial institutions to cash in on the financially ignorant members of the society and so is a stigmatized idea.

In such communities the government needs to first carry out mass civic education to the target beneficiaries of the great youth fund-which the government has increased from Kshs.1-1.5 B.  It is only after this that the government can use the analogy of the goat which you can take to the river but you cannot force to drink water.

The youths problem is also extended to the women- who are their mothers, and who suffered with their children when their fathers took loans without planning, that left them begging for food. It is the mothers who tell their children never to ‘touch’ loans (like their father). The women have also lived their advice by shunning the women fund which is reported to have been left idle in banks and other financial intermediaries.

When governments introduce anything for its citizenry it should go ahead and publicize it in the same way as when political parties advertise themselves to the electorate. The government’s efforts so far are laudable but this step further- to make the target population aware- would be worthwhile.

Apart from the government several other organizations have taken it as their primary role to provide funding to young men and women. A good example of such an organization is the Kenya Women Finance Trust which funds women enterprises through groups. Other organization include Opportunity International, K-rep Development Agencies, community based micro-finance entities and several commercial banks. The idea of funding through groups is the direction taken by many organizations which try to break the barriers to funds by these two interest groups. The members of each group guarantee one another for the loans. The idea is to have the risk spread to several people, reducing the prospect of loss of their money.

Whether this is the best way to reach these disadvantaged groups is debatable. The truth, however, is that women and youth would like to advance their lives through businesses, and that they need somebody to give them the initial capital. Banks and most financial intermediaries could be the best pipelines for channeling this money from the government but they may not be the best to publicize this facility given the masses’ attitudes towards them. The people always think there are hidden charges or just something they are not being told that comes with these loans.

The onus is therefore on the government to think of ways of making sure the target beneficiaries of their policies are aware of them. Politicians, religious leaders and other community leaders could also be handy in spreading this information. And so are you and me.