Thousands of youth benefit from YEDF Trade Fairs

Thousands of young entrepreneurs have sold their products and services in trade fairs organized by the Youth Enterprise Development Fund in the last one year. Some of the youth have been linked to the export market through these fairs.

The Fund has been able to offer marketing support to approximately 1,800 young entrepreneurs, drawn from over 650 small enterprises countrywide. Some of these have been facilitated to market their products in the international markets, notably Cairo (Egypt), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Burundi. Others have been sponsored to take part in marketing events such as trade fairs organized by the Unit in various parts of the country. Some of these past events include:

Central Provincial Trade fair 2011-Nyeri

  Western Provincial Trade fair 2011-Kakamega

 Rift Valley Provincial Trade fair 2011-Nakuru

 The North Eastern Provincial Trade fair 2011-Garissa

 Eastern provincial Trade fair 2011-Meru

National Youth Trade fair-2010

The Commonwealth Youth Programme-Ruaraka

and Silver Springs hotel-Nairobi.

The Western provincial trade fair was opened by Youth and Sports Minister Dr. Paul Otuoma who challenged youth to take advantage of opportunities provided by government programmes. This message was repeated by the North Eastern PC while opening the trade fair at Garissa.

From these events, young entrepreneurs have obtained the much needed market exposure as well as very critical business networks. Many have forged very strategic and symbiotic linkages with some of the leads they obtained. Further, they have obtained information from these events that have enabled them to change their style of doing business such as rebranding and product diversification.

Apart from these events, many young entrepreneurs have sought and obtained recommendation letters from the Fund to enable them make applications for tenders. Some of them have been successful in their bids. Others have received vital marketing information from the Fund’s officers.

The marketing needs among the Kenyan young entrepreneurs remain immense. The Fund has set in motion plans to bring on board strategic partners to reinforce its efforts in meeting these needs.

The challenge is that, young people lack the sophistication, experience and networks to penetrate markets on their own.