Entrepreneurial Factors Influencing The Performance Of Government Funded Youth Group Enterprises In Turbo Sub County Uasin Gishu County- Kenya

Abstract

One of government’s initiatives to boost youths economically was by funding youth group enterprises through the program called Youth Enterprise Development Funds (YEDF) and Uwezo fund. Though, the initiative was rolled out official in 2007 with an aim of creating job opportunities for young people. In early 2016 Kenyan youths were reported to account for 35% of total population but representing 67% of the general unemployment population out of 40% unemployment percent in Kenya. In Uasin Gishu it is reported that youth unemployment remains to be high with more than 600,000 youths unemployed compared to other counties. In order to understand why most of government funded youth group enterprises were not creating more jobs as intended. The study was guided by four research objectives that follow; establish the influence of group leadership skills on the performance of government funded youth group enterprises; determine the contribution of group entrepreneurship skills on the performance of government funded youth group enterprises; find out the role of group entrepreneurial resources on the performance of government funded youth group enterprises and lastly find out the role of group entrepreneurial vision on the performance of government funded youth group enterprises in Turbo Sub-County Uasin Gishu County. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design; used purposive, stratified random and random sampling to get respondents for the study. The Data was collected by both primary and secondary sources. Inferential statistics were used to make generalization about the study; Simple and multiple linear regression was used to show how independent variables related to dependent (Youth group enterprise performance). When multiple regression analysis was used it gave R= 0.553 and sig. 000 meaning all independent variables had a significant relationship with dependent variable. From the study we can conclude that though majority of youth group enterprises 78% are not doing well in terms of assets, profitability and growth in terms of number of employees in order to serve the purpose that government funds were intended for. It was clear that entrepreneurial resources have significant effect on youth group enterprise performance since it could explain 50.1% variation on Youth group Enterprise performance. It was also found out that social networking, good customer relationship, more trainings, regular entrepreneurial campaigns are necessary for youth groups to achieve their goals