Beneficiaries of funds from the World Bank-backed National Youth Opportunities Towards Advancement (Nyota) project will be tracked for six months, a strategy aimed at safeguarding the sustainability of the initiative.
The beneficiaries of President William Ruto's administration’s flagship jobs programme will be followed up to gauge their transition into jobs, entrepreneurship, and improved livelihoods, according to a disclosure by the State Department for Youth Affairs and Creative Economy.
The move signals a shift towards closer monitoring of public programmes, as the government comes under pressure to demonstrate that large-scale youth empowerment initiatives are delivering tangible results.
The tracking will be carried out through nationwide tracer studies covering all 47 counties, targeting a representative sample of participants across different interventions and demographic groups.
“Each assignment will track beneficiaries to evaluate outcomes such as skill enhancement, employment opportunities, skill usefulness, savings habits, access to government procurement, project support to County Governments, employment conditions and challenges faced,” the Youth Affairs and Creative Economy department says.
“The tracer studies will not only document post-intervention outcomes of the project beneficiaries but also analyse the factors that contributed to success or failure.”
The authorities will rely on a mix of digital and field-based tools, stating that consultants that the government is seeking to hire “should clearly outline the tools to be used, incorporating digital data collection platforms, phone-based surveys, and where appropriate, incentives to enhance respondent follow-up and retention”.
This approach is expected to allow continuous engagement with beneficiaries after they exit the programme.
The Nyota programme, backed by the World Bank, will run until December 2028 with a budget of Sh33 billion, of which Sh29.5 billion is financed by the lender, including a Sh25.8 billion loan component. The State targets 820,000 youth aged between 18 and 29, and up to 35 years for persons with disabilities, with a mix of business grants, skills training and digital support on accessing government opportunities.
The programme also plans to equip 90,000 young people with in-demand skills to boost employability and certify at least 20,000 youths after structured skilling initiatives, targeting those with secondary education or below, who often struggle to access formal jobs or capital.
Since its launch last November, the programme has disbursed nearly Sh3 billion to about 120,000 youth, based on beneficiary figures announced during regional project launches, often presided over by the President.
Each beneficiary receives Sh25,000. Out of this, Sh22,000 is credited directly to their mobile wallets to support business operations, and Sh3,000 is deposited into a ‘Haba na Haba’ Savings Account managed by the National Social Security Fund (NSSF). The tracking will generate detailed insights into whether participants secure employment, grow businesses, or improve their earnings after exiting the programme.
“The tracer studies will further analyse youth employment and income status of beneficiaries before and after enrolling in the Nyota Project and provide information on the type of employment, wage/income levels of beneficiaries and reasons for unemployment or not joining the labour force.”
The enhanced monitoring framework appears to be informed by lessons from a previous World Bank-funded initiative, the Kenya Youth Employment and Opportunities Project (KYEOP), which ended in 2024 after supporting 87,432 youth with Sh15 billion in funding—Sh9.2 billion from the World Bank and Sh5.8 billion from the government.
An audit of KYEOP raised red flags over beneficiary traceability and business survival. It found that about half of the 553 sampled beneficiaries were either unreachable or unwilling to cooperate with auditors, while some reported that their businesses had collapsed. Of 308 grant recipients sampled, 98 could not be reached, and 119 declined to engage, while among 91 businesses physically verified, 16 had shut down. The findings exposed weaknesses in follow-up mechanisms and highlighted the risks of poor accountability in youth enterprise programmes.
In response, the World Bank said in 2025 it had introduced additional safeguards under Nyota, including the use of blockchain technology to track the movement of funds.
“Furthermore, impact evaluations and tracer studies will be conducted to gather robust evidence on effective interventions and necessary adjustments,” the lender said.
Past studies, including one done by the State-run Kenya National Bureau of Statistics in 2016, have shown that many small businesses in Kenya collapse within their first five years due to poor financial management, high operating costs, and limited access to affordable credit.
Principal Secretary in the State Department for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Susan Mang'eni, said last month that the government is targeting an 80 percent success rate for youth-supported enterprises under Nyota.
“We realised if we can stimulate economic participation of at least 70 young people in every ward across the country and even if eventually you have a success rate of 50 percent or even 80 percent, [because]our target is about 80 percent, then you would have impacted on the economic landscape of those areas and this is what will bring about opportunities,” Ms Mang’eni said.
