Excerpt Two From A Recent Interview With University College London | State Of Social Enterprises Ecosystems In Kenya
Earlier this year, The Youth Café was interviewed by Eliana Summer-Galai, a Masters student with the Institute of Global Prosperity at University College London (UCL). This interview was to provide insight into her research on the Kenyan Social Enterprise Ecosystem. The research explores the actors across the ecosystem, looking at stakeholders from four stages of the entrepreneurial life cycle (entrepreneurial education, idea generation, funding, and growth), and the opportunities and challenges for local social entrepreneurs.
The questions asked and our responses form a series of 8 blog posts dissecting important issues with regard to the Social Enterprise Ecosystem in Kenya. This is the second post of the series on How we would describe the Kenyan Social Enterprise Ecosystem landscape.
More than 52.57 million people in Kenya live on less than the poverty line of 1.25 USD per day with continuous rapid population growth causing an increase in the challenge for governments, civil society and the private sector to provide essential, quality services such as access to water, energy, sanitation, education, and healthcare. This has led to the emergence of Social Enterprises with the aim to help solve service delivery gaps. Social Enterprises in Kenya are defined as non-public providers of services to low-income populations, based on a sustainable revenue model and a social mission. The key service area elements of the Social Enterprise ecosystem in Kenya include Education, Energy, Health, Water and sanitation. The state of Social Enterprise activities in Kenya is gaining momentum. It estimates that there could be 43,933 social enterprises in the country, many of them recently established and optimistic about the future.
Kenya’s Social Entrepreneurship Ecosystem is vibrant and if the economy continues to grow at current levels while protecting itself against the risks of political instability and insecurity, then there is every reason to be optimistic about the potential for further expansion in response to the socio-economic challenges which exist. Social Enterprises have not fully realized their potential in Kenya. Many Social Enterprises struggle to scale up and develop sustainable models. The Social Enterprises Ecosystem is composed of actors, institutions and networks that support Social Enterprises in contributing to development goals.
Young leadership is a hallmark of social enterprise in Kenya with 65% being led by young people (25-44 years). Young leadership points to a constructive response to the pressing need for job creation among young people in Kenya, a priority for the Kenyan Government over the past few years. Social Enterprises are committed to creating employment opportunities by responding to local needs and realities, among which has a youth unemployment rate in Kenya of 25%. Social enterprise is rapidly capturing imaginations across Africa and Asia and around the world. There is increasing activity in this field in the form of social start-ups, incubators, accelerators and the emergence of social finance. At the same time, NGOs and CSOs seem to be turning to social enterprise as a potential model to ensure the longer-term sustainability of their operations.
The Youth Café works with young men and women around Africa as a trailblazer in advancing youth-led approaches toward achieving sustainable development, social equity, innovative solutions, community resilience and transformative change.
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