Analysis of Micro-Financing on Youth Empowerment: Case of Micro-Finance Institutions in Murang’a County, Kenya

Abstract

Over the past several decades, youth population in Murang’a County has been faced by grave mass unemployment challenge characterized by limited participation; colossal drugs, alcohol and substance abuse; severe crime and deviant behaviour; health related problems; limited and/or poor housing among others. While the number of youth serving organizations in the area has increased over the years, this problem continues to deteriorate. Various past studies have investigated impacts of massive youth unemployment. However, few studies have investigated effective ways of empowering the youth. Therefore, this survey study aims to find out an all-inclusive, practical and sustainable way of empowering youth population in Murang’a County through micro-financing. The study focus is development and implementation of a model of sustainable micro-entrepreneurship enabled by “social-conscious-driven” micro-financing without bearing detrimental externalities on the beneficiaries or the environment. The study objective is to analyze the four fundamental micro-financing facets: micro-credit, micro-entrepreneurship, micro-savings and entrepreneurial training on youth empowerment through participation, engagement and productivity in the economy. The study is significant as both the county and national government will be able to devise informed, effective and long term strategies of dealing with the massive youth unemployment. The researcher will also develop a need for further studies on effective youth empowerment programs in Kenya. The research design that was employed was descriptive research. The population of the study was 25% of youth population in Murang’a County that represents young micro-entrepreneurs. A sample size of 72 young micro-entrepreneurs was used. Single stage proportionate cluster sampling was used to select the 72 micro-entrepreneurs where each cluster represented a Sub-county in Murang’a County. Simple random sampling was thereafter used to select the required sample size. A series of self-administered questionnaires were distributed to the sampled micro-entrepreneurs. Descriptive data analysis was done using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) data analysis software version 17.0.  The data was presented in graphs, charts, tables and figures.

Key Words: Micro- Financing Institutions, Youth Empowerment, Murang’a County