Armed with college degrees, university graduates are passionate to establish businesses in their local regions. Using a combination of instincts and knowledge acquired in college, they set out to establish businesses that are today turning around the economy of the rural regions of Kenya.
What sets these entrepreneurs apart and help them sustain their businesses’ growth is the fact that they have a capacity to learn and adopt new production processes with a lot of determination to excel.
The entry of university graduates into entrepreneurship is somewhat surprising as most of them have the orientation to securing managerial jobs in the public and private sectors. Most of the jobs which are ‘suitable’ for graduates are usually based in the city or at provincial and district headquarters. A typical university graduate is an employee rather than an entrepreneur and has to work in towns or in the city.
This non-involvement of graduates in entrepreneurship could be due to the fact that incentives for university graduates starting businesses in the rural areas are considerably low compared to those incentives from formal employment. Further, higher education is seen as a way out of the struggles and problems associated with rural life and to most it is supposed to open up the doors of the good life associated with city life.
However, this stereotype of a university graduate is gradually changing. The early 2000’s saw an upsurge of university graduate entrepreneurs founding enterprises in little known rural towns in the country. The need for a rural industrialization policy has been echoed in several National Development Plans and District Development Plans in Kenya. In all the counties rural industrialization is acknowledged as an important attribute of regional economic development. All the district development plans have proposed the establishment of agricultural processing enterprises, services and retail business. The purpose of establishing such is to surmount the regional development problems of unemployment and poverty.
A policy that supports the graduates’ vision of upgrading profitable local businesses, improving production capacity and expanding their businesses should be formulated. Supporting these self-driven, savvy and motivated entrepreneurs should therefore be seen as a worth-while endeavor. After all they are the new agents of change and growth in rural economies.
