Entrepreneurship training and development and growth of youth enterprises: case study of youth enterprise development fund (YEDF), Kajiado North Constituency

An important aspect of economic growth in any given nation is the entrepreneurs who promote \nchange and initiate development activities. Due to the inability of large organizations to create \nenough employment opportunities for our youth, the SME sector has received considerable \nattention In 2006, the government being in cognizant of the dangers posed by youth \nunemployment established the Youth Enterprise Development Fund with the main aim of \nreducing youth unemployment. The fund has established a unit known as Enterprise \nDevelopment Unit whose main work is building capacity of youth enterprises that have either \nbenefited directly or indirectly from the fund through entrepreneurship training. The main issue \nof concern in the development of youth enterprises is the generally high failure rate. The purpose \nof this research project was to evaluate the current youth entrepreneurship programs to establish \nthe effectiveness in ensuring beneficiaries are well equipped to start and run viable ventures. The \nstudy established that the quality of training being given to the youth does not result to \nsignificant growth and development of the youth enterprises. There is therefore need to revise the \ncurriculum used by YEDF to include other training areas such as internship and mentorship in \norder to improve performance and survival rates of the enterprises.