Magnifying Visibility Of Youth Leaders

International Republican Institute, The Youth Café and partners are working on a project aimed to enhance the skills of Kenyan youth to gain influence within the political establishment and to serve in civic and political leadership roles. To accomplish this, the project will hold a series of capacity-building training to increase the technical skills of Kenyan youth to successfully participate in the party primaries and contest in the elections.

The project will bring youth voices into the 2022 general elections by developing and contextualizing Youth County Manifestos to specific Counties in Kenya with consideration for the next 5 years. The project is designed to equip the next generation of young Kenyan politicians and civic activists with skills and knowledge in human-centered design approaches, deliberative democracy, community engagement, networking, policy development, and advocacy skills needed to influence the forthcoming general elections. 

We believe that change can be effected IF political party and civil society youth have the skills for resource mobilization, communications and policy development, have networks and opportunities to engage with their leadership and have platforms to showcase their leadership capacity to party leadership; THEN political party and civil society youth will gain influence within their party and with their communities-allowing them to play a more direct role in the political and electoral process; BECAUSE there is evidence that suggests there is a strong incentive for youth leaders to collaborate across political party divides and civil society issues and community interests to advance youth participation in the political and electoral process ahead of 2022.

The main objective of the project is to build the capacity of emerging Kenyan youth leaders to viably participate in the 2022 national election process. In an effort to expand space for youth to take on the party and civic leadership roles and improve internal democracy by removing institutional barriers that prevent their full participation.

The project will initially engage with political party leaders and civil society steering committees/executive directors to gain buy-in for the program. The project will have a youth advisory group, composed of advocates of youth civic and political leaders who have demonstrated through their work the effectiveness of youth as a valuable partner.

The youth advisory group will provide mentorship to participants throughout the program, attend sessions, provide lessons learned, and support program participants in developing community engagement campaigns and a Youth Manifesto. This will ensure the program is both for youth and by youth and will also contribute to shifting leadership perceptions. 

The project will conduct a training series for two distinct youth cohorts: political party youth and youth civic actors. The topics of common interest such as leadership best practices, resource mobilization, inclusion, transparency and accountability, ethics, branding and advocacy. Having civic and political leaders socialize at the start of their careers will ensure that when they rise within their respective organizations, there is an established network and basis for collaboration.

Following the training sessions, the project will organize a National Youth Summit to bring together the two cohorts of political and civic leaders from their communities to develop a community engagement campaign and start the initial drafting of regionally contextualized Youth Manifestos. The participants will determine a joint strategy for community engagement that seeks to demonstrate how youth are valuable to civil society and political parties, which they will then implement in and begin adjusting the national Youth Manifesto to their respective county’s context. To do so, they will take as a starting point the national Youth Manifesto that The Youth Café published following the 2017 elections. 

These regionally specific manifestos will be signed by political and civic leadership, outlining the necessity for more meaningful youth engagement in political and electoral processes ahead of the 2022 elections. Through these interactions, promising independent youth leaders will cement their knowledge of political and electoral processes, identify solutions common to youth challenges and build relationships with other politically and civically active youth leaders. The manifesto will be used to hold leaders accountable to the needs of youth.

Following the Youth Summit, participants from the two cohorts will implement joint community engagement campaigns. The participants will be asked to identify a problem or need in their community, articulate an approach to address this issue, and design and execute a campaign to do so. Depending on the specific problem each participant chooses to address, these campaigns could consist of a number of specific activities.

These activities could include door-to-door campaigns, radio or other media appearances, political lobbying efforts, awareness-raising initiatives, petitions, volunteer events, dialogue forums, among others. Targeted training on campaign operations will precede these campaigns, which will highlight youth achievements and emphasize the necessity for youth to be engaged in political and civic processes. This approach aims to socialize youth as viable leaders to political and civic leaders in their respective communities.

The project will develop and promote youth-focused content highlighting the impact of young political and civic actors. By creating this content the project aims to promote the inclusion of youth in leadership positions and tell the story of youth potential to a broad audience and create a more balanced media environment where young people are portrayed as active leaders in their community.

The project will shift civic leadership perceptions toward greater acceptance of putting forth more youth in leadership positions and political leadership toward ensuring more youth-run for elected positions within the party or government. Also, our project partner Shujaaz will conduct training for program participants on storytelling for advocacy mechanisms so they can replicate this intervention in the future.

At the conclusion of the program, the project will host a Youth Manifesto sign-on event for civic and political leaders and other relevant stakeholders, such as non-youth-focused CSOs, private sector actors, members of academia, and others. On the first day, participants will have the opportunity to present and advocate for the priorities outlined in the youth manifesto. Following these presentations, and after the manifesto is explained, all participants and leaders will be asked to sign on to the manifesto, committing to comply with it ahead of the 2022 elections.

To kick off the project, partners and the members of the youth advisory held a 3-day retreat that acted as a joint brainstorming session on members’ roles and as a member of the Youth Advisory Group. Furthermore, discussions on members and other key partners contributed towards the effective implementation of the program as the project is open to innovative ideas to aid in delivering a result-oriented program. The insights and contributions were fruitful and meaningful and the feedback and recommendations will be used to feed into the project refining and implementation.

The goal of the retreat was fully achieved.

In the plenary session, the Youth Advisory had a discussion on the gaps in the youth leadership and recommendations on how the gaps can be addressed.

Some of the gaps identified include: 1)Civic incompetence of young people leading to Voter Apathy amongst the young people which was widely attributed to their civic incompetence. Many young people, and especially first-time voters do not have the civic knowledge to know why it is their civic duty and right to participate in any democratic process.

2)Tokenism leading to the current existing transactional nature of the political process. Young people associate active participation in the political process with financial gain at the end.

3)Weak dialogue culture which leads to weak intergenerational dialogues creating non-existing rivalries between young people and the adult generation. This rivalry goes a long way to marginalize youth as they are not comfortable being at the table with the adults, while the adults feel that the young people are not well experienced to take up active leadership roles.

4)Nominations fees are too high for young people during party primaries, the stipulated fees for young people to run for elective positions is extremely high. One participant gave his real-life experience with parties primaries. He was vying with one of the  parties for the Member of Parliament. He needed 25,000 to register as a life member of the party and an additional 75,000 to register in the nomination stage. All these are finances he does not have. Hence, such political systems are in place to automatically disqualify young people from actively seeking political office.

5) Negotiated democracy as there are areas where the adults negotiate for positions leaving the young people out. This practice is prevalent in the ASAL areas and it is in place to ensure that the adults have their interests captured while systematically excluding women and young people.

From the discussions, some of the recommendations that emerged include: 1) Reducing the age of the majority and it should be made into a policy issue. The age of the majority should be made to be 16 years old. This means that the youth at the age of 16 should be considered eligible for voting.

2) Civic education should also be made a policy issue. Civic education should be made compulsory in the education system. Civic education should be inculcated as early as possible in the life of young people.

3)Inculcating volunteerism in the lives of the young people. This should be harnessed as much as possible by young leaders. There are some aspects of the political system that cannot be paid as it is unrealistic. Hence, young people should go out of their way and for the love of the party and country, be present in all the electoral cycles.

4)Digital Democracy Platforms should provide safe platforms to foster meaningful discussions. The current existing platforms are either unsafe or not well used by young people. Digital platforms have extreme potential that can be well harnessed.

5)Making voting compulsory should also be made a policy issue. Making voting compulsory will ensure all citizens take part in the democratic process. This will give young people the moral authority to challenge the existing government as they voted it in or not.

Research suggests that when young people are involved in the political leadership of the nation they are likely to participate in elections and uphold the constitution. The participation of youth in politics in Kenya is regarded as minimal, showing that there is a lack of robust inclusion in the planning and execution of political decisions.

Youth would benefit from easily accessible information about the political intentions of their leaders and active engagement in future development initiatives. This project will open avenues for youth to share their challenges, encourage them to participate in the electoral process, and be in a position to contribute to future development planning.

Kenyan youth have demonstrated a lack of political interest and knowledge about the electoral processes, voting rights, and the electoral system, which has reduced their participation in Kenya’s elections over the years. In Kenya, young people are often politically marginalized because of age, lack of experience, and resources.

Significant obstacles for young people in Kenya in political participation are at individual, organizational and structural levels. The project will seek to reduce individual obstacles such as distrust in political institutions, the conviction of a weak democracy, and social-political exclusion. We trust that this project will help to increase youth participation in the 2022 elections, promote youth ownership in societal development, and hold political leaders accountable in the next 5 years. This project is aligned with one of our goals which are achieving a transparent, democratic, and accountable environment. 

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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