- Youth remain largely unaware of Sacco benefits.
- CEO calls for cooperative education in schools.
- Digital marketing could attract more young savers.
The low adoption of cooperatives as a means of investment and savings among young people in the country has been blamed on stakeholders’ poor marketing and educational programmes in the sector.
To change the scenario, leading consultant on cooperatives and National Social Security Fund (NSSF) Sacco CEO Antony Kahoru called for intensified marketing of cooperatives and inclusion of information on the sector early in the education curriculum.
Kahoru defended cooperatives as a key pillar of the economy as well as one of the leading sectors where savings had the potential to be mobilised from across most of the working citizens and especially the youth.
His argument comes at a time when enthusiasts in the cooperatives have in the recent past hugely blamed low flow of information on the benefits of cooperatives for the continued dominance of the sector by elderly people in agriculture and formal employment.
In a statement, Kahoru insisted that it was actually time for the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) to include lessons about the cooperatives sector in the education syllabus right from early education to secondary schools, middle level colleges and universities.
READ ALSO:
He explained that any income earning Kenyan could join the cooperative movement and make savings which would eventually qualify them to borrow money and earn dividends.
However, Kahoru noted that a large number of youthful school leavers joined colleges or ended up in informal sector employment or income generating establishments unaware that cooperatives, and especially Saccos, offered profitable channels for commerce.
Young debutants in income earning activities, Kahoru said, needed to be encouraged to take advantage of benefits accrued from entry into the cooperative sector through the launch of digital marketing packages targeting them.
He advised that digital entry systems and marketing packages available in the cooperative industry should be intensified to attract young Kenyans, most of whom were currently unaware of the flexible savings and loan borrowing offers.
Kahoru noted that the government needed to play a key role in nurturing the culture of savings at early stages, to ensure that young people embraced savings before entry into income earning.
He noted that it was unfortunate that a large percentage of Kenyans left universities and colleges to enter the income earning sector and age group at times completely unaware of the importance of savings and means to access loans through softer systems than those offered by commercial banks and shylocks.
Despite intensified calls from various experts in the cooperative sector for the entities to attract young people into their systems, the sector continues to be dominated by the elderly.
Most Saccos have at the same time continued to employ old marketing systems in their efforts to recruit new members, sometimes ignoring the informal sectors where a larger number of young people are based.
YOU MAY WANT TO READ:
Experts have at the same time urged cooperative leadership to ensure that they included young people in the higher echelons of management, because it was such people who had the capacity to reach the youth and encourage them to join the sector.
In the Matatu and agriculture linked Saccos and cooperative unions, basic research by Sacco Review in Embu County and neighbouring counties revealed that workers remained outside the entities, with cooperatives’ membership and shareholding dominated by investors.
This is despite the potential of the staffers to enter the Saccos and make daily savings based on their incomes, which at times may even be more than contributions from the main investors.
Education and awareness information filtering to various other sectors which are dominated by the youth, key among them the boda boda and welding industry sectors, on the importance of joining the cooperative sector, has remained quite low, former commissioner of cooperatives Njang’ombe says.
By Robert Nyagah
Get more stories from our website: Sacco Review.
For comments and clarifications, write to: Saccoreview@
Kindly follow us via our social media pages on Facebook: Sacco Review Newspaper for timely updates
Stay ahead of the pack! Grab the latest Sacco Review newspaper!
