Building Skills for a Shared Future
By Kaplich Barsito
At an Affordable Housing Programme (AHP) construction site, a young mason can read a wall through touch: whether the mix is right, whether the line will hold and whether today’s work will still stand decades from now. Yet many artisans carry expertise in their hands without a certificate in their pockets.
That gap between what a person can do and what the labour market can formally recognise sits at the heart of World Youth Skills Day 2026 and its theme, “Skills for a Shared Future.
Kenya’s education journey explains why this conversation matters. In the early decades after independence, university places were scarce and access itself was treated as the principal measure of success.
A degree was rare, prestigious and, for many, a fairly direct route into professional or public-sector employment. The national challenge then was to open the gates wider.
Kenya did so with remarkable speed. Universities expanded, constituent colleges were upgraded and private institutions grew. According to the University Statistics 2024/2025 report, enrolment in degree programmes reached 628,541 students in 2024. This expansion is a major national achievement: many more families can now see a child enter university than was imaginable two generations ago.
But success has created a new challenge. A much larger stream of graduates is entering a labour market that has not expanded at the same pace. It is therefore no longer enough to ask how many young people enter and graduate from university. We must ask what they can do, how quickly they can adapt and whether their competencies match the market economies they are entering.
The country must now move from expansion alone to expansion accompanied by adequate resources, industry exposure, accountability and demonstrable competence.
Employers increasingly require practical experience, digital fluency, communication, teamwork, problem-solving, safety awareness and the ability to continue learning.
The same principle applies to TVET institutions and colleges. Their particular strength is occupational competence: the ability to translate knowledge into a product, service or completed task.
The question should be whether every pathway produces a competent, ethical and adaptable worker. University students need more structured workplace exposure, while TVET trainees require access to modern technology, entrepreneurship, communication skills and clear opportunities for progression. AHP is demonstrating how this can work in practice. Beyond delivering homes, its sites have become active skills ecosystems where young people gain experience in masonry, carpentry, plumbing, electrical installation, steel fixing, finishing, site safety and modern construction methods.
In collaboration with the National Industrial Training Authority (NITA), workers whose skills were acquired informally can be assessed and certified through Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL).
More than 1,200 artisans have been certified under the Affordable Housing Programme, giving nationally recognised value to
skills developed over years of practical work.
RPL changes the starting point. It does not assume that learning only happens in a classroom.
Its guidelines provide for identifying, assessing and certifying knowledge and competence regardless of where, when or how they were acquired. A worker can present evidence of experience, undergo practical assessment, address identified gaps and obtain a qualification that makes those skills visible to employers. This matters deeply to a young parent or family breadwinner.
Conventional training can require someone to leave work, lose income and place household responsibilities on hold.
A work-based approach allows the construction site to remain in both the workplace and classroom. The artisan earns while improving, practising and proving competence. The family continues meeting its responsibilities, while the worker builds a portable qualification that can unlock better wages, more secure contracts, entrepreneurship and opportunities beyond one project.
This initiative is the deeper promise of “Skills for a Shared Future.” A shared future cannot be built by degrees alone, nor by practical training isolated from technology and theory. It requires universities that engage industry, TVET institutions that keep pace with modern equipment and green construction, employers that offer structured apprenticeships, and national projects that deliberately develop people
while delivering infrastructure.
Kenya’s next education success should therefore be measured not only by enrolment and graduation, but also by competence, employability, productivity and dignity of work. When a graduate can apply knowledge, when an artisan’s experience becomes a recognised qualification and when a young person can learn without abandoning family responsibilities, education becomes more than a certificate. It becomes a tool for building homes, livelihoods and a future in which progress is genuinely shared.
The writer is the Director of Public Communications, State Department for Housing and Urban Development
About the Affordable Housing Program
The Affordable Housing Program (Boma Yangu) is a flagship initiative of the Government of Kenya aimed at increasing access to decent, quality, and affordable homes for all Kenyans. Implemented under the State Department for Housing and Urban Development, the programme seeks to reduce the housing deficit, stimulate job creation, and promote inclusive, sustainable urban growth in line with Vision 2030 and the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA).