Tackle Kenya’s runaway crisis of young men urgently

Kenya has more or less abandoned her youth. It’s an all too familiar story. Police gunning down youths, some barely out of their teens, for robbery, or ‘disappearing’ others for ties to terrorism. Some estates in major urban areas are literally gang fields where youths drop out of school, go into crime and die in a hail of bullets. Millions of others are eking out subsistence livelihoods in flooded sectors being touts, boda boda riders, politicians fixers, cartel enforcers, jua kali mechanics and doing car wash. The activities are everywhere, earning them peanuts. They’ll never achieve their potential, and are stuck in economic purgatory. A country where its young men’s brains and physical energy are atrophying from lack of use is going nowhere. Many lives are idling away. Multitudes are enslaved by cultural practices that condemn them to a life of pastoralism and banditry. Nobody seems to find anything wrong with this. Worse is to come! Kenya has thrown its young men under the bus, and closed its eyes to what has evolved into a full-blown social, security and economic crisis. The results are manifest; ranging from rampant insecurity, militias, terrorism, banditry and cattle rustling, a drug pandemic, alcoholism, and broken families, among others, indicating a badly broken society. Kenyans must think deeply. Kenya cannot continue rationalising the carnage of young men to police bullets simply as law enforcement, nor their wasting away in the millions as normal. Youths are the backbone of any country. Break that, and the country is crippled forever. How does the country deal with the challenges affecting the opposite gender— girls? While it is true to say that girls are also facing struggles, the overwhelming, almost obsessive network of support comprising Government, NGOs, religious institutions et al means that they always have someone to turn to. Boys are on their own, with zero support networks either in communities or the government. A simple illustration is in order. Schools closed for 10 months in March last year due to Covid-19. Kenya is seized of the matter of girls who were impregnated or faced other adversities during the closure. They are being closely tracked. The same Kenya, however, is completely oblivious of the thousands of schoolboys who got entangled in drugs, became gang members, ran away from the hardships at home, or became child labourers to support their families. Their lives are equally destroyed. This is the gender flipside. But, most worryingly, nobody cares! The boys feature nowhere in government radar. It should be noted while the likely outcome of failure of society to empower girls to fully develop their potential is teenage pregnancies and child mothers, the flipside, which is failure to develop the potential of boys, is creation of thugs who terrorise communities. The support system put in place for girls is the right way to go. Society must invest heavily in empowering its most valuable equity- its young people. The problem with Kenya is that this support has been completely lopsided. Boys have been stereotyped, and condemned. It is now clear that this policy is as shortsighted as it is misguided. Its effects are now too dire to ignore. But still, the Government, which must take the lead as the duty bearer, continues to bury its head in the sand. So, where does Kenya go from here? The Ministry of Public Service and Gender, led by Prof. Margaret Kobia, must immediately rationalise its jaundiced view of its mandate. Put resources- time, money, technical expertise and programmes- to address this crisis of the country’s young men starting at school level. The government might want to start by addressing the complete shutting out of male representation at the policy-making level of that ministry, which has created a veritable echo chamber. Maybe therein lies the problem. When the ministry realigns its focus, this will give the signal for non-State actors such as NGOs and religious institutions to start putting teeth into what is now a major countrywide crisis. — gathukara@gmail.com

Tackle Kenya’s runaway crisis of young men urgently

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