With the current focus on the decline in formal employment and increase in the number of jobs in the informal sector, there is a lot that needs to be done to sustain more decent jobs. It seems most governments, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, have plans to improve the performance of the informal sector by supporting it in various ways to create more decent jobs. Although these efforts are welcome, more efforts are needed to sustain the jobs created. The Kenyan government’s policy plans in recent years have singled out the Jua Kali sector as the mainstay of Kenya’s economy in the creation of jobs. There are many efforts by many government departments to lay out strategies to improve the operating capability of the informal sector. However, these efforts are being put to the test by the inability of most Jua Kali artisanal businesses and, in general, micro, small, and medium (MSMEs) businesses collapsing soon after their inception. There is a consensus that the Jua Kali sector is expanding and accounts for more than 80 percent of new jobs in the Kenyan economy. Creating decent jobs seems to be a tall order, as many Jua Kali artisanal businesses collapse by the 10th year after their inception. The Jua Kali sector should not only be evaluated based on the number of jobs it creates, but also on the sustainability of the number of businesses that sustain the jobs being created in the sector. The magnitude of the informal sector does not reflect the number of decent jobs being created, enabling workers to have a continuous stream of income. Data for this research were obtained by a survey carried out in the Eastlands of Nairobi in Kenya using a questionnaire, an interview, and an observation schedule. The research established that only 52.2 percent of the interviewed artisans owned artisanal businesses, 52.8 percent had worked in the Jua Kali sector for six years, while 22.9 percent and 7.5 percent had worked in the informal worked for ten and 18 years respectively. Most of the artisans had gained their skills by apprenticeship (86.3%), while a minority (12.7%) had gained their skills by training in Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) institutions. A further one percent gained their skills in their former employment. Most of the artisans had attained the basic formal education qualifications, i.e. primary (27.9%) and secondary (47.6%) school education. However, the data analysis established a trend of most young people dropping out of the sector shortly after joining it, and most artisanal businesses collapsing after a short time. The research came up with three critical factors to improve the sustainability of decent jobs in the Jua Kali sector: intervention to have more artisans working as casuals to transition to owning businesses, to train the master trainers to be better in training, and to mentor artisanal entrepreneurs to manage their businesses better to sustain decent jobs.
Christopher Momanyi (Sat,) studied this question.