As the Connected Summit 2022 came to an end on 14^th April, Ajira Digital Program held a panel discussion on Sustainable Entrepreneurship for Job creation: Role of the digital economy in re-imagining labour and youth employment highlighting how the different stakeholders can create more and better digital work opportunities to ensure sustainable employment of youth.

The discussion, which was moderated by Dr. Ehud Gachugu, Project Director Ajira Digital Program at KEPSA focused the panellists in exploring solution on how Digital Economy can generate more and better jobs for young people in Kenya. Based on the premise that over 75% of the population is under 35 years of age and approximately 1 million young people are entering the labour market annually, this agenda warrants urgent attention and collaborative effort by all stakeholders.

The panellists included Patrick Karanja (Program Partner Mastercard Foundation), Ken Mwenda (Managing Director eMobilis Mobile Technologies) Eng. Mercy Mugure, (CEO Adept Technologies which is a local Business Process Outsourcing Company), Mutembei Kariuki (Co-Founder and CEO Fastagger which is a service platform that provides image annotation services to AI-driven companies) and Joseph Mjomba(Ajira alumni) a Data Entry Specialist and Web Developer from Diani, Kwale county.

Some of the key outcomes included:

1. The need to grow the local digital work outsourcing volumes by both private and public sectors.
2. Kenya has a great resource of digital platforms, freelancers, young innovators and digital entrepreneurs. Ajira Digital Project has a database of this resource and businesses especially SME can tap into it.
3. Digital literacy and trainings are not enough. There is need to extend wrap- around services which include access to affordable devices, Internet connectivity, mentorship, couching, finance, and holistic business development services for youth venturing into digital work.
4. Digital work is real work, evidence points that digital workers are earning way above average wage from traditional gig occupations.
5. The country has made great strides in unlocking the potential of digital work and is leading in the region. There is still a lot of work needed in awareness creation, policy, infrastructure, social protection among others.
6. A comprehensive, multi-sectoral and coordinated strategy that supports job creation for youth beyond digital work is required due to digital divide constraints.

The session was concluded by a call to all stakeholders to be intentional and deliberate in supporting efforts of creating decent and meaningful digital work opportunities for the young people.