Services sector in Kenya is now employing more young Kenyans compared to agriculture sector despite evidence of low earnings.
According to a report by World Data Lab, Kenya is among 11 countries in African which have transitioned to services sector from agriculture. The Youth Employment Outlook 2026 indicates that as of 2025, youth employment was still concentrated in agriculture, accounting for 47% of jobs, with about 143 million young Africans working in the sector.
However, agriculture has a slower projected growth rate of 1.3 times (2015–2040) compared with the services sector (2.4 times) meaning by 2033 the services sector will employ more
young Africans than the agriculture sector for the first time, with 3.8 million more workers.
While the services sector employs close to 119 million young people, 90pc of people are working in informal employment which attract low wages and is unable to lift many out of poverty.
Speaking during the launch of the report, Labour and Skills Development Principal Secretary Shadrack Mwadime said the government is keen to ensure expansion of skilled workforce to meet industry needs and reduce unemployment where Kenyan has at least 890,000 unemployed young people.
“Out of one million Kenyans graduating every year, in our analysis, we discovered that our economy can only absorb 300,000. So then the question we ask ourselves is what are the 700,000 doing out there. We discovered that those highly skilled Kenyans are also engaged in the informal sector,” said Mwadime.
Mwadime said trough the National Skills Policy 2023 the government is addressing skills gap the exists in the industry through twelve sector skills committees.
“We work with educational institutions so that we can change the curriculum and come up with graduates who actually meet industry expectations,” he noted.
The report further indicates that about 57pc or 304 million youth in Africa, are estimated to be working as of 2025, compared with about 48pc in the rest of the world. The number of employed youth on the continent is projected to increase to 806 million by 2040, though the share is expected to remain roughly stable at 58%.
“This report builds on the Africa Youth Employment Clock, a labour market data model that tracks youth employment trends in Africa, laying an analytical foundation for understanding these trends,” added Wolfgang Fengler, CEO and Co-Founder, World Data Lab.
The report Across Africa, youth jobs in the services sector are more likely to be formal at 22pc compared with industry jobs at 2pc and agricultural jobs 3pc.
The continent is similarly facing a rural-urban migration shift which will see urbanisation reshaping youth employment, with youth jobs shifting towards urban centres.
“Africa’s youth population continues to surge, positioning the continent as the world’s future talent engine. The 2026 Outlook report shows that, to harness this momentum, we must move beyond ‘any work’ to ‘dignified and fulfilling work,” said Hannah Tsadik, Kenya Country Director, Mastercard Foundation.
World Data Lab says Africa’s high youth employment rates do not reflect job quality, with the majority of young workers concentrated in informal, low-paying employment.
