Deputy President Kithure Kindiki has announced plans to expand the National Youth Opportunities Towards Advancement (NYOTA) programme to reach two million young people, signaling a significant scale-up of the government’s youth empowerment agenda.
Speaking on Wednesday during a high-level review meeting of the NYOTA and Kenya Jobs and Economic Transformation (KJET) programmes at his Official Residence in Karen, Kindiki said the first phase of NYOTA had surpassed its initial coverage targets and would now be broadened in a second phase.
“The way NYOTA was crafted was to reach 820,000 young people through its various components. But we are now set to reach one million direct beneficiaries,” he said.
The Deputy President noted that the current phase, implemented in partnership with the World Bank, had been successfully rolled out nationwide.
He added that the government would sustain and expand the programme beyond the lifespan of the existing financing arrangement.
“Even after the expiry of the current project which we are partnering with the World Bank, the government will allocate additional resources to reach more young people. We are going to target another one million youth in phase two of the project,” he said.
Under the first phase, beneficiaries drawn from wards across the country received an initial disbursement of Sh22,000 to support micro and small enterprises.
Participants who demonstrate progress qualify for an additional Sh22,000, bringing the total allocation to Sh50,000, inclusive of Sh6,000 earmarked as savings.
Kindiki described the intervention as a deliberate effort to align youth empowerment initiatives with the administration’s Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda.
He said the restructuring of the programme had enhanced its reach and impact, particularly among young people previously excluded from mainstream government support.
“This is a serious intervention for the young people who ordinarily would not have been reached by the various government interventions. Many of them told us in the field that the initial disbursement of Sh22,000 was the highest amount of money they have ever handled. You can imagine what the total sum of Sh50,000 would mean to the hundreds of thousands of the young people set to benefit,” he said.
The Deputy President emphasised that the expansion to two million beneficiaries reflects the government’s broader strategy to stimulate grassroots enterprise, enhance income generation and curb youth unemployment.
He also disclosed that the Kenya Jobs and Economic Transformation programme is undergoing restructuring to maximize its impact.
The Sh20 billion initiative is designed to strengthen established enterprises, enabling them to scale operations, increase revenues and create additional employment opportunities.
“We are looking at ways to make it more beneficial to more entrepreneurs. We want to cut unnecessary expenditure and make sure as many businesses and young people are direct beneficiaries. In the next few weeks we will announce how KJET will be rolled out,” Kindiki said.
The review meeting brought together Cabinet Secretaries, Principal Secretaries and heads of implementing agencies to assess progress and refine implementation frameworks for both programmes.
