Just the other day 24th April 2012, World Bank via Africa Gathering organized a serious forum for brainstorming session at Business Lounge, Junction Mall, Ngong Road Nairobi Kenya. The session was meant for the Kenyan youths to discuss high unemployment rate in Kenya and Africa at large, and I happened to have been in that meeting. Marieme Jamme who was sent by the World Bank to get Kenyan’s views concerning unemployment, started by wanting to know who amongst us were employed, unemployed, and self employed, it then emerged that a lot of people were self employed.                                                                                
The meeting composed of different people selected randomly from different places. Are there jobs in Kenya ? Jamme asked, many people were like not sure but later poured answers like jobs are there but corruption, high qualifications and experiences, bad education system etc.
Jamme wanted to get a report, a report that she would take back to the World Bank, unlike all a long World Bank has been giving reports to Africans, this time they wanted a report from Africans to the World Bank. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
Looking at some of the things that can be done to end poverty in Kenya and other parts of Africa, farming was coming out strongly as one of the best things one can embark on, but not all people can be farmers, again Kenyan youths feels that farming is not a” sexy” job to do, the youths would prefer clean office jobs, a white Kenyan farmer was then given a chance to present her talk, according to her farming is the way to go, she showed us what she had done and what she had achieved with farming. But still it was had to convince a Kenyan youth to turn into farming.   
We were then asked to define who an ordinary Kenyan is, after different people gave different answers on this, it then dawned to us that most people in this meeting were well off and were running there own businesses. How many people here comes from the slums, one person asked, I was the only one from Kibera slum, this was a challenge to the organizers because many unemployed youths comes from the slums, then the whole attention turned on me, I became like the reference point and I represented many unemployed youths from Kibera.
I had a lot of questions to answer, then we were quickly divided into three groups to find a possible solution to the en rooting unemployment , from the the groups the most alarming issue was the bad education system that many suggested needs to be looked at a gain.
by Joshua Owino, Kibera News Network
Reposted from http://joshculture.wordpress.com/2012/05/