Business leaders urged to explore digital job opportunities for youth

Business leaders around the country have been urged to tap into the vast digital space and explore opportunities to create jobs for the youth.

During a forum with business leaders from Kisumu and Homa Bay Counties, it was revealed that more than 1.2 million young people are earning their livelihood through digital and digitally-enabled jobs.

The forum hosted by Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) aimed to assess and explore the synergies and potential collaboration.

This scale has been reached as a result of the growing importance of Kenya’s digital ecosystem and the role of the private sector in spurring innovations, jobs, and enterprises for youth.

Speaking at the forum, KEPSA’s Deputy CEO-Projects and Foundation, Eng. Martha Cheruto, highlighted KEPSA’s commitment to supporting the government to ensure social-economic transformation of the country and more so towards achieving a high-quality life for Kenyans by 2030.

Martha noted that the youthful population accounting for 75 per cent of the total population forms a great resource for businesses to tap into and accelerate the transformation.

Representing over 1,000,000 businesses from all sectors of the economy, KEPSA has been playing a key role in engaging the private sector to support the implementation of the Ajira Digital Program through digitization of the business processes and the creation of digital jobs for the youth.

Yakazi Upskilling Program (YUP) Business Development Lead, Marilyn Seleyan reflected how their partnership with Ajira through KEPSA has helped the platform in getting the right skills and connected them to trainings, events, digital content, trainers, skilling resources, work tools, and growth opportunities.

She added that online jobs are not limited to youth only in Nairobi but across the counties.

Several of the Program’s beneficiaries shared the significant impact Ajira has had in their lives by offering them decent source of livelihood.