President William Ruto has announced that his government will begin disbursing a further Ksh4.4 billion to NYOTA grantees from next week.
Speaking at the 25th EAC MSMEs Trade Fair at Uhuru Gardens in Nairobi on Tuesday November 11, Ruto revealed that the government would undertake training for the remaining applicants for the programme, starting on Friday.
"We started that process last week, and I just want to announce the rest of the process is underway," Ruto revealed.
"I am informed by CS [Wycliffe Oparanya] and his team that they will be training the rest of the country from this Friday. So from next week, we will disburse another Ksh4.4 billion to the people who will have been trained and identified."
NYOTA is a five-year transformative agenda by the government, funded by the World Bank. It aims to empower youths by addressing unemployment, income insecurity, and limited savings.
The programme aims to provide Ksh50,000 in grants for young people selected from each of the 1,450 wards in Kenya, enabling them to launch business ventures.
Physical verification of the first batch of applicants took place on Friday, October 24, with the first batch of beneficiaries receiving funds on November 7.
From the first batch, more than 3800 youths who benefited from the grant hailed from Nakuru County.
Amid anticipation over the second cohort, Ruto revealed that a large chunk of beneficiaries would stem from Nairobi after the training exercise.
"In the city of Nairobi alone, we will be looking for 6000 enterprises and we are going to give them Ksh300 million shillings. We want to do this to raise capital for the small entrepreneurs to scale them up."
The president also emphasised that at least 50 per cent of the NYOTA beneficiaries should be women.
From the same programme, the president also announced plans to identify 600,000 small entrepreneurs to support them with capacity building which would enable them to collaborate with government for business.
To ensure the funds are utilised effectively, the government in October also announced strict monitoring and accountability mechanisms.
Principal Secretary for the State Department for Youth Affairs and Creative Economy, Fikirini Jacobs revealed the government had deployed consultants to empower and monitor beneficiaries of the fund.
