Investigation Into Sustainability Challenges Of The Youths Enterprises In Marsabit County, Kenya

The youths of Kenya forms a critical mass required by the nation to realize a middle level industrialized economy by the year 2030. For the youths to effectively contribute to this agenda they need to be economically empowered to harness their creativity and innovation to foster entrepreneurial development. Consequently, the government of Kenya established Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) with an objective of providing capital for the youths to start micro enterprises. Unfortunately, significant number of individual and youth group projects supported by YEDF among the pastoralists communities in Marsabit County have either wound up within few years of establishment or not actively performing. Following this preliminary observation, a research inquiry was designed to find out factors that hindered sustainability of the pastoralists` youths projects in Marsabit Central district, Marsabit County. The research employed Ex Post Facto design and census sampling framework to collect information through structured questionnaire from 50 sample respondents. Using 95% levels of confidence, the research established that there were significant relationships between ages of the entrepreneurs and capital growth (p-value, α = 0.001), levels of formal education and capital growth (p-value, α = 0.026) as well as business funding and capital growth (p-value, α = 0.006). The study further concluded that insufficient funding, inadequate staff for monitoring and evaluation and lack of business training was found to be critical factors contributing to the youths` enterprise sustainability challenges in Marsabit County.