KCB Foundation and Nandi County Government have partnered to tackle youth unemployment through vocational training and enterprise development. The partnership follows the graduation of a second 2Jiajiri cohort and a third cohort is now training in the county. KCB Foundation Head of Programmes Joblin Omari says the programme has trained 35,195 youth nationally.
The 2Jiajiri programme is the KCB Foundation’s flagship youth empowerment initiative. It combines technical and vocational skills training with mentorship, business development support and access to finance, so that graduates can either secure employment or start a business. The Nandi partnership applies that model through the county’s vocational training centres.
The partnership is not new. In August 2025, Governor Stephen Sang presided over the graduation of 650 young residents, of whom 350 had trained under the KCB Foundation’s programme in Nandi’s vocational training centres and 300 were recruits to the Nandi County Youth Service. The second cohort was launched immediately after that graduation, which suggests the current cohort is the continuation of an established relationship.
Omari’s figures describe the programme’s scale. He says it has trained 35,195 youth, supported 10,954 businesses and facilitated the creation of more than 150,555 jobs. Those are the headline numbers, and they should be read with care, because earlier KCB Foundation statements gave higher totals.
In August 2025, the foundation reported that 40,063 youth had been trained and more than 179,000 jobs created, so the figures in the current announcement are lower than those reported a year earlier.
The support package goes beyond training. Graduates in earlier cohorts received tools and start-up kits, and KCB Bank provided start-up and working capital through the foundation.
In Kisii, the programme has disbursed Sh259 million in loans and issued 918 business start-up toolkits, which illustrates how the finance element works alongside training.
The programme is also expanding across the group’s markets. KCB is extending 2Jiajiri to Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, with South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to follow. The programme’s stated goal is to create at least 1.5 million direct and indirect jobs and help set up 30,000 businesses over five years.
Other partnerships have produced similar outputs. A three-year regional partnership between KCB Foundation and GIZ’s Employment for Skills Development in Africa programme graduated 3,500 youths in building and construction. The KCB Foundation-GIZ work has also created 1,257 businesses and 7,272 jobs directly and indirectly, supporting more than 10,000 households.
Nandi’s governor has said the county will expand its collaboration with the foundation to widen training opportunities. That commitment matters because county governments are central to delivering vocational training outside Nairobi, where many young people have fewer employment options.
Youth unemployment remains one of Kenya’s most pressing economic problems, and skills programmes are judged by whether their graduates keep earning. Independent evaluation of business survival and income after graduation would give a clearer picture of impact than cumulative job counts alone.
The next signals will be the graduation of the third cohort in Nandi and the release of verified outcome data that reconciles the programme’s cumulative figures. Those results will show whether the programme’s jobs and business numbers hold up over time.
