Nyota Fund is a political tool to reduce discontent among youth

The government has been rolling out the National Youth Opportunities Towards Advancement Project, popularly known as the Nyota Fund. Marketed as a flagship youth empowerment programme, Nyota is being presented as evidence that the State has been listening to the frustrations of a generation struggling with joblessness. While President William Ruto had previously insisted that jobs can only be found by shipping the youth abroad, a sudden idea occurred to turn some of the unemployed youth into entrepreneurs. Yet, when placed in historical and political context, particularly alongside the failed Hustler Fund and the youth-led protests of 2024 and 2025, the Nyota Fund appears less like a breakthrough and more like a rebranding of survival politics aimed at containing dissent rather than resolving its causes.

The Nyota Fund was conceived at a moment of heightened economic and political pressure. Youth unemployment remains disproportionately high, especially among those without access to tertiary education or formal employment networks. The post-pandemic economy, coupled with tax hikes and austerity-driven reforms, deepened precarity for young people already struggling to survive in the informal sector. Against this backdrop, Nyota emerged under the government’s Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda and is largely financed through World Bank support, a fact that complicates its presentation as a purely homegrown solution.

Selected beneficiaries receive a one-off grant of approximately Sh50,000 to start or expand small businesses, alongside access to skills training, mentorship, apprenticeships, and certification through Recognition of Prior Learning. Unlike earlier initiatives, Nyota is designed as a grant-based programme rather than a loan facility, a distinction the government has emphasised heavily in its messaging.

On paper, Nyota appears to address many of the shortcomings that plagued earlier interventions. However, its significance becomes clearer when compared to the Hustler Fund, the programme it quietly replaces in political relevance. Launched in 2022 as a cornerstone of Ruto’s campaign promise to uplift the “hustler” class, the Hustler Fund was built on instant mobile loans offered without collateral. It targeted informal traders, boda boda riders, small-scale vendors, and other economically marginalised Kenyans who had long been excluded from formal credit systems.

But Kenya is a nation bedraggled in debt, and loan apps are a dime a dozen, hence the Hustler Fund was not offering any new solutions to the youth, who rapidly exploited it to take one-off loans that they were clear they would not pay. In this way, news of the Hustle Fund disappeared quietly, and the government went back to asking its youth to consider jobs abroad.

At the heart of all these initiatives is the government’s desperate need to deal with a youth class that it sees as ungovernable. Africa’s population is composed primarily of people under the age of 18, meaning that the majority of the population is left to fend for itself as an ageing class continues to hold onto power and opportunity. This economic disparity was behind the Gen Z protests. The government, rather than find ways to redistribute wealth, ramped up its efforts to dispose of its troublesome youth, resulting in new scandals.

Nyota’s rollout coincided with a period of intense youth mobilisation and protest. In this context, Nyota cannot be understood solely as a development initiative. It also operates as a political instrument designed to soften discontent and reassert legitimacy among a disenchanted youth population. By targeting unemployed young people with cash grants, the government effectively transforms structural injustice into an individualised opportunity problem. Instead of creating stable jobs, improving wages, or expanding industrial capacity, the government distributes small amounts of capital to a limited number of beneficiaries, leaving the broader crisis intact.

The Nyota Fund is not without potential. If implemented transparently, scaled responsibly, and paired with genuine structural reforms, it could meaningfully support some young Kenyans. But like the Hustler Fund before it, Nyota risks becoming another chapter in Kenya’s long history of short-term economic fixes deployed to manage political pressure rather than resolve its causes.

Ms Njahira is an international lawyer