Peter Drucker, renowned management guru, once said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. He was referring to excellent policies that organisations moot but do not see light of day because of weak organisational cultures.

Recently, our new President William Ruto unveiled his Cabinet nominees. One ministry that stood out for me was that of Youth Affairs, Sports and the Arts because pairing up youth affairs with sports and the arts is a winning combination.

This approach might just be the magic bullet to drive out the biggest elephant in the room: youth unemployment, if only proper strategies are put in place.

The new government is taking office when unemployment rate stands at over seven per cent. The rate of joblessness is almost 40 per cent of youth, or an estimated 5.2 million young adults who are actively looking for work.

For many past administrations, youth unemployment has been a hit-and-miss affair yet our young people are the very axis on which the destiny of this country will turn. Will the Kenya Kwanza government manage to strike a mighty blow to youth unemployment?

The good news is that the youthful former Budalang’i MP Ababu Namwamba is the Cabinet nominee for Youth Affairs. Having been in the same ministry a decade ago, many are confident that he has the ability to centre and amplify youth voices and perspectives as the ‘Hustler’ government takes shape. 

As Namwamba organizes his priority list, he may have to look in the direction of the creatives sector as one avenue that can generate thousands of job opportunities for our youth within a short period.

The creatives sector encompasses visual and performing arts, crafts, cultural festivals, paintings, sculptures, photography, publishing, music, books, dance, film, television, radio, newspapers and magazines, design, fashion, video games, digital animation, architecture, and advertising among others.

Experts concur that creativity is a key driver of economic success. Globally, the connection between creativity and wealth, innovation, and competitiveness of nations has been witnessed.

The creatives sector is, therefore, regarded as one of the most promising economic sectors with high potential to contribute to local and regional wealth and jobs creation for young people. Thus, the establishment of creative industries firms is an important indicator for the competitiveness of a nation.

In Kenya, the creatives sector has potential to play pivotal role in not only creating jobs for young people but also catalysing socio-economic development.

But owing to the fact that Nigeria’s film industry, for instance, contributes at least 1.42 per cent (or $7.2 billion) to the country’s GDP, employing 300,000 people directly and one million others indirectly, whereas South Africa’s creative industry accounts for 3.6 per cent of the country’s employment, a lot more needs to be done in Kenya.

The Kenya Kwanza government should work with subject matter experts in Kenya’s creatives sector to effectively bring out the power of the creative industry in creating new business opportunities, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs for the jobless youth and promoting the emergence of national and regional value chains hence fueling Kenya’s economic growth. 

While there is clearly no shortage of talent in the country, Kenya has been relatively poor in profiting from the talents of its youth due to limited supply capacity, lack of intellectual property knowledge, obsolete policies and regulations, as well as underinvestment in the industry.

The new Ministry of Youth Affairs, Sports and the Arts needs to re-define this paradigm through earmarking the opportunities in the creative sector, removing obstacles to mobility for young people in this sector and lobbying for establishment of enabling policy frameworks to help the creatives thrive in Kenya.

If you want to know that our young people are a treasure trove of skills and ideas that this country desperately needs, go to our schools and colleges and see the talent exhibited during drama and music festivals. Where does this talent go? Time has come for a Marshall Plan to place the creatives sector at the centre of youth empowerment for our nation’s prosperity.

—The writer is a strategic communications consultant