Youth Enterprise Development Fund: experiences and lessons from Kilifi County, Kenya

Abstract

The study was conducted to establish and analyze the contribution of the Youth Enterprise Development Fund in the growth of youth owned enterprises in Kilifi County, Kenya. The study targeted young entrepreneurs owning business who have benefited from Youth Enterprise Development Fund through the Constituency based loan products and the financial intermediaries.

The researcher reviewed relevant literature by various scholars and other documents such as the Strategic Plan of YEDF and their loan repayment status reports. The theoretical framework of the study was based on the group entrepreneurship theoretical perspective associated with Gandhiji from India. The study employed multistage sampling. Cluster sampling was used to primarily cluster the study area into five constituencies and further used purposive sampling to pick two constituencies namely Ganze and Magarini.

Purposive sampling method was used to sample five members from each of the 10groups and this gave a sample size of 50 loaned youth groups. The study employed the use of questionnaires with both closed and open ended questions and structured interviews. Data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics that involve use of pie charts and graphs was used to analyze the data.

The main findings of the study revealed that majority of the respondents' were men accounting for 56.5% of the respondents. Most of the respondents had attained tertiary education. Majority of the respondents were single accounting to 63.0 % of the respondents. The study further established that the amount of loan given to the respondents was too little to enable the young entrepreneurs engage in a meaningful business with 65.2% getting between 25,000 and 50,000.

Majority of the respondents indicated that their business had grown with 67.7% having employed at least on employee in their businesses. Most of the respondents indicated that the procedure followed to access loans from the Fund was not easy to follow through (58.7%). Following results of the study it is recommended that initiatives aimed at sensitizing the youth on the various loan products offered by YEDF. It is also recommended that YEDF should review upwards the minimum amount of loan given to youth entrepreneurs.