Beyond the classroom: Can agribusiness give Kisa North youth a new path?

Kisa North MCA James Etabale(centre) during a groundbreaking ceremony at Elukanji Comprehensive school in Khwisero sub county

What happens to a young person after the classroom when the certificate is in hand but the job does not come?

For many young people in Kisa North Ward, Kakamega County, that question marks the difficult transition from education to economic independence. Years are spent in school, college or university preparing for employment, only for many graduates to find themselves back home searching for opportunities, sending applications and waiting for a chance that may take years to arrive.

In Kisa North, however, there is an attempt to change the conversation. Instead of seeing formal employment as the only destination after school, young people are being encouraged to consider agriculture and entrepreneurship as ways of creating their own livelihoods.

The idea is being built around a farmers’ cooperative that brings together several enterprises, including beekeeping, dairy farming, banana and avocado production, chicken farming and African leafy vegetables. The intention is to give young people different options through which they can enter agribusiness, develop an income and eventually create employment for others.

It is a simple idea on paper, but changing how young people view agriculture is a much bigger task. For a generation that has grown up being told that education is the route to a good job, convincing them that farming can also be a business requires more than asking them to pick up a hoe. It requires showing them where the market is, how much they can earn, where the capital will come from and whether the enterprise can grow.

James Etabale, the Kisa North Member of County Assembly, believes that shift in thinking is necessary. Long before he entered politics, Etabale was involved in community work focused on education and young people. His experience, he says, made him notice the gap between the expectations created by education and the opportunities available after graduation.

“The idea is that it does not necessarily mean that when you go to high school, or college, or university, after you finish you go and start working, doing your job. You can also create yourself a space,” Etabale says.

That space, in his view, can be created through agriculture. The cooperative is therefore not built around one crop or one business. A young person can choose beekeeping, another can venture into dairy or poultry, while others can explore fruit farming or vegetables.

The diversity is important because the young people being targeted do not have the same interests, resources or starting points. Some may have access to family land, while others may need to begin with a smaller enterprise. Some may already have agricultural knowledge, while others require training before they can turn an idea into a business.

The initiative is also confronting a more difficult question: do young people themselves want to take this path?

Etabale says the response has been mixed. Some have shown interest, but others remain reluctant to embrace entrepreneurship. He says this has made recruitment a gradual process, requiring patience and continued engagement rather than simply announcing a cooperative and expecting young people to join.

There are, however, early examples of participation. Etabale points to a young person undertaking NYOTA training at the sub-county level, describing him as an example of the kind of initiative he would like other young people to embrace.

For the model to succeed, though, training will have to translate into actual economic activity. A young person can learn about poultry farming without having money to buy chicks, a farmer can grow vegetables without having a reliable market, and someone can acquire entrepreneurial skills without having the capital needed to start.

This makes access to finance and markets just as important as changing attitudes. If young people are expected to see agriculture as a serious career, the businesses they establish must be capable of producing real income and surviving beyond the excitement of the first few months.

That challenge is not unique to Kisa North, but it gives the local initiative a bigger significance. The ward is testing whether agriculture can be presented to young people not as something their parents did because they had no alternative, but as an enterprise that can be deliberately built, managed and expanded.

The effort also brings Etabale’s own journey into the story.

Politics was not where his journey began. Before elective leadership, he headed a community-based organisation known as KOTRA, working around education and support for young people. In 2017, elders approached him to help provide a candidate for the MCA seat.

Education became one of the first areas where that reality became apparent. Etabale had a strong interest in supporting students and says the ward’s bursary allocation was increased from about Sh2 million to Sh4 million per ward. In Kisa North, he says the amount distributed rose from about Sh400,000 in the first year to Sh960,000 in the following year.

The Misango Water Project is one of the major initiatives in Kisa North. Etabale says that when he took office, the project had stalled because the owner of the land on which the facility stood had not been paid. He says he worked with the county administration to address the land issue before the project was solarised to reduce the cost of pumping water.

The project draws water from the Yala River area and pumps it to a higher point before distribution. Tanks have been replaced, water is flowing in parts of the ward and about 300 homesteads have been mapped for last-mile connectivity, according to Etabale.

Etabale says that difference in expectations has sometimes made it difficult to explain what can realistically be delivered. Still, he considers the establishment of the water infrastructure an important step towards eventually bringing connections closer to individual homes.Roads have presented another institutional challenge. 

That tension between public expectations and the formal responsibilities of elected leaders has become a recurring feature of his tenure. It also explains why the youth initiative matters to him: unlike waiting for a government project to employ every young person, the cooperative seeks to encourage young people to participate directly in creating economic opportunities.

For Etabale, the bigger issue is how government and communities understand their respective responsibilities.

“I want a society where systems are working, that an MCA is left to purely performance duties, which is legislation, representation, and oversight,” he says.

His experience has also changed how he views the promises made during campaigns. He acknowledges that he entered politics with energy and high expectations and that, like many candidates, he promised residents a great deal. Once in office, he encountered budgetary limitations, political considerations and institutional boundaries that could determine whether an idea moved forward.

He says the electorate has nevertheless remained patient, even when what residents expected from their representative did not always match what the office could provide.

That experience now sits alongside his efforts to encourage young people to build opportunities of their own. Agriculture cannot replace every formal job, and a cooperative cannot guarantee success for every participant. But if young people can access training, capital, markets and sustained support, it can give them a starting point .

The test for Kisa North will therefore extend beyond how many young people join the cooperative. The more important question will be whether they remain involved long enough to build viable enterprises and whether those enterprises can eventually provide incomes for their owners and opportunities for others.