Abstract:

As Africa’s youth population increases so does the lack of decent jobs, with the unemployment rate in the region having almost doubled in the last ten years. A segment of this demographic is university students who are not spared from this trend. In Kenya, over 80,000 university graduates enter the job market annually. However, it can take up to five years for many of them to earn gainful employment. The gap between what is learned in the classroom and what is expected in the labor market is one of the contributing factors to this trend, with most Kenyan employers citing lack of 21st century technical and soft skills among graduates. Mentorship has the potential to address this by upskilling graduates to bridge the skills gap between available jobs and employable youth. Since 2016, we have implemented an eight-month structured mentorship model for Kenyan tertiary-level tech students through a two-pronged approach; hands-on learning and simulated competitions. The program’s impact was evaluated using the Kirkpatrick model that measures reaction, learning, behavior, and results. This paper presents the mentorship model that has been administered among six cohorts of 200 students and reports the impact from the last three cohorts. The results indicate that stakeholder-driven out-of-classroom mentorship significantly increases industry-relevant skills in personal development, professional
development, innovation, ICT, scholarship, and community engagement, thus enhancing learning outcomes and nurturing employability.

Keywords:

Employability, Mentorship, Tech, Kenya, Structured Mentorship, Soft Skills.