State corporations and parastatals are struggling to open job opportunities for the country’s youthful population, undermining efforts to contain an unemployment crisis that mainly affects the youth.
This is based on a review of the staffing composition at the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), National Lands Commission (NLC), Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) and Public Service Commission (PSC) that revealed that most of their employees are aged 50 years and above.
Disclosures by the National Assembly Committee on National Cohesion and Equal Opportunity show that 35 per cent of staff at the PSC and CBK are aged above 50 years.
A paltry 6.2 per cent of CBK staff, or 81 employees, are aged between 21 and 30 years, while at AFA, 15.7 per cent (75 workers) are aged between 21 and 30 years. Some 17 per cent of PSC staff (46) are aged 35 years and below, while at NLC, those below 30 years make up 19 per cent of the workforce (167).
The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) headquarters in Nairobi.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Youth unemployment continues to be a nightmare for Kenya, with the United Nations warning that this is a ticking time bomb that could, in the long term, pose a serious security threat.
“The age composition across the institutions is skewed towards older age groups. CBK and PSC have a significant proportion of staff within the 51 to 60 age bracket, while AFA and NLC show concentration within the 30 to 50 age range, with fewer employees in the younger age categories,” the committee says in the report tabled in Parliament on August 13, 2026.
The report shows that CBK had the highest staff count of the four, with 1,311 employees, followed by NLC at 840, AFA with 477 staff and PSC at 273.
Some 2.83 million Kenyan youth are jobless and not in school, the highest in the East African region, ahead of 1.46 million in Tanzania, 1.17 million in Uganda and 735,500 in Rwanda, according to a report by the International Labour Organisation.
Lack of opportunities in the public service highlights Kenya’s struggles in creating jobs to absorb the high number of young Kenyans graduating from universities and colleges.
Kenya created 75,000 formal jobs in 2024, a drop from the 122,900 created the previous year, compared with the 286,695 university and college graduates produced every year.
Some of the factors cited for the dismal employment prospects for youth at the agencies include a lack of deliberate hiring of young talent to succeed those who exit, inadequate budgets, and resistance to diversifying employee composition based on age.
The Parliamentary committee says that all public entities should develop and implement structured youth recruitment and internship programmes to enhance the rate of hiring youthful Kenyans and strengthen succession planning.
The Public Service Commission offices at Commission House in Nairobi.
Photo credit: Evans Habil | Nation Media Group
For example, the government has, since 2019, been employing graduates on the Public Service Internship Programme (PSIP) across ministries, departments and agencies for a year, with a monthly stipend of Sh25,000.
There have been a number of unsuccessful attempts in the past to have PSIP interns given permanent and pensionable jobs to replace retiring civil servants.
CBK, PSC, AFA and NLC were chosen for the survey due to the need to examine diversity within entities that perform national governance, regulatory and policy-setting functions and which operate highly structured and centralised human resource systems.
“These institutions play a critical role in shaping public sector employment standards and are therefore strategically positioned to demonstrate compliance with the constitutional principles on equality, inclusivity and representation,” the Parliamentary committee added.
