Young Makueni
Your future should not depend on leaving Makueni.
Nobody should be told not to go. People have always moved and they move for good reasons. The question is whether staying is a real choice or the option left over.
The test for every proposal on this page is the same. Twelve months later, is anyone earning money because of it.
Certificates, launches and handover photographs do not pass that test. Several programmes in this county have been declared successful on the day they began, which is roughly the opposite of evaluation.
Digital work
There are young people in this county already paid by clients they have never met. What they had was reliable power, data for three months and somebody who showed them the door existed. That is a smaller problem than it sounds.
Artificial intelligence
These tools are now part of ordinary work. Used well, one person does what took three. Used carelessly, a client can tell immediately and your rating never recovers. The difference should be taught here, early, by people doing the work.
Technical skills
Solar installation, welding, plumbing, machinery repair, construction finishing. There is real work in this county and too much of it is done by people brought in from outside. Youth polytechnics equipped properly would close that gap.
Entrepreneurship
Most young businesses here fail for one of two reasons: no working capital, or no customer beyond the immediate neighbourhood. Training that ignores both is entertainment.
Remote work
Distance is the constraint that technology genuinely removes. A hub with dependable power and connectivity in each sub-county is a modest ask with a measurable answer: how many people are earning after twelve months.
Creative economy
Music, photography, film, design and writing are already producing income for young people in Makueni, mostly without any support. Rehearsal and recording space, and county procurement that actually hires local creatives, would help more than a talent show.
Education
Transition from secondary school is where most young people here are lost. Career guidance in this county is often a single visit from someone selling a college. That can be done properly and cheaply.
Sport and talent
Talent here is developed by volunteers who buy the balls themselves. A levelled pitch, a functioning ward league and transport to competition is not a large budget line.
Employment
Where public projects happen in a ward, the labour should be recruited in that ward and the list should be public. That is a small rule with a large effect on trust.
If you are already doing this work, we want you on the team
The digital clinics are run by young people from Makueni who are already earning online. Somebody who left last year and came back is more persuasive than a trainer flown in for the day.