Kenya taking too long to achieve low fertility

By 2012, just two years from now, about one million youths in Kenya will turn 18 years or would be young adults.

Adulthood will come with new demands and responsibilities that the government will have to start planning for now.

Top on the list is employment. However, this will not be the only demand. The youth coming of age will also need food, decent housing and other social amenities such as clean water and sanitation among others.

According to the latest census figures, more than half of Kenya’s 38.61 million population — actually 24.5 million — are aged below 25 years. The 16-year-olds, looking forward to becoming adults are 856,398.

The trend is worrying government and policy makers as the long-awaited demographic transition, where the country is expected to move from high fertility stage to that of low fertility is taking too long to be realised.

Though fertility rates have declined from 4.9 children per woman in 2003 to 4.6 children per woman in 2009, the population has not declined or even stabilised.

In the past decade, an extra 10 million people have been added to the country’s population, bringing the number to 38.61 million.

It means the country is adding one million people annually to the already high population, representing a 34.4 per cent growth since the last census of 1999. The glaring figures have made Kenya one of the countries experiencing a major youth bulge.

According to Kwame Owino of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the growth poses a problem, at a time when the country is trying to transform itself into a middle-income state.

“The country will need to create more employment, build more schools, employ more teachers and construct more health facilities. All this will need more funding,” says Owino.

Owino says the number of youths show that education and employment will still remain critical in policy formulation in the future.

Simply put, Nairobi which has seen its population rise from a mere 509,286 in 1969 to 3.13 million last year, will have to construct more health facilities to add to its current 406, invest on its piped water system which currently serves 75.7 per cent of its households, and expand its sewer lines which serves only 47.7 per cent of the households.

Though the city still has the largest wage employment among the major towns, contributing 40 per cent of the jobs, this will not be enough for the millions of youth entering the labour market every year.

The capital city will have to come up with new strategies that stimulate further growth in transport and communication, construction, wholesale and retail and hotels and restaurants, the core sectors in employment creation.

All this will need extra funding, which means the government will have to come up with effective policies and strategies for raising extra revenue.