Influence of Youth Enterprise Development Fund Practices on Initiation of Youth Projects in Turkana Central Sub County, Turkana County, Kenya

Abstract

The Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) is a government establishment under the Ministry of Public Service, Gender and Youth Affairs. It was gazetted on 8th December 2006 and then converted into a State Corporation on 11th May 2007. The Fund is one of the leading projects of Vision 2030, under the social pillar. Its deliberate motivation is on enterprise growth as a crucial tactic that will escalate financial opportunities for, and involvement by Kenyan Youth in national development. The Fund pursues to build employment chances for youth through entrepreneurship and inspiring them to be employment inventors and not job chasers. It ensures this by providing stress-free and cheap financial and business enlargement funding amenities to young Kenyans who are profound on beginning or growing businesses. With the many years since its inception, it is imperative to establish whether the Fund is achieving its objectives in influencing initiation of the youth projects (YPs). The study will therefore be guided by four objectives: to examine the influence of training on initiation of YPs in Turkana Central Sub County, to establish the level of technology on initiation of YPs, to examine the influence of management practice on initiation of YPs in Turkana Central Sub County, to assess the influence of the funding on initiation of YPs in Turkana Central Sub County. The study findings gave valuable information to stakeholders involved in promotion of youth projects, challenges faced were understood, information acted as literature review for future academicians as well as the achievement of some of the key pillars of the millennium development goals. The study adopted the Funding Theory of Change. Similarly, the study utilized census research design because it was representative and because the target population was relatively small. The Target Population was 187 and comprised of Officials from YEDF, Ministry of Youth Affairs, Regional Coordinator of Credit, and Group leaders from Youth groups. A sample size of 187 was considered. The study used questionnaires and interview schedules as research instruments to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. The supervisor did the instruments validation exercise. Reliability of the instruments was determined through a pilot study where a Cronbach alpha co-efficient from SPSS was determined and any value of 0.70 and above indicated that the instruments are highly reliable. Quantitative data was analyzed quantitatively using SPSS Software while Qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Both quantitative and qualitative findings were presented in tables. Frequencies and percentages, were used as statistical tools to understand the relationship between variables. From the findings, 82.5%, 81.6%, 80.7% and 81.6% of the respondents indicated that training, level of technology,

funding and management practices respectively largely influenced initiation of youth projects The failure by YEDF to improve and support the welfare of youth who need to initiate projects was attributed to incompetence of staff, inadequate funds, lack of training, failure to adopt the use of modern technology and poor management practices. It was recommended that the leadership of YEDF and the line ministry should work on a framework that would see an increased number of trainings, funds, adoption of modern technology and improvement of management practices.