President William Ruto recently went on a 10-day trip to the United States in order to promote Kenyan businesses.
Upon his return, Ruto gave hope to unemployed Kenyans about landing opportunities with the likes of Amazon and google, but his statement has sparked mixed reactions as Kenyans do not know if it is intended to give Kenyans false hope.
The president said he had special job arrangements with the various tech giants based in the US during his visit, causing Kenyans to react with skepticism as the companies are currently laying off workers. He met the leading tech giants including,Microsoft, Intel, Google and Apple with the aim of nurturing Kenya’s start-up sector.
Dr.William Ruto met executives from the different tech giants including, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger Google’s Chief Financial Officer of Alphabet Ruth Porat, Microsoft COO Brad Smith.
“I was in America and we agreed with Amazon, Intel and Google that they will provide digital jobs for Kenyan youth,” he said. Later,in a church service in Nairobi’s Langata area on Sunday,he issued the same statement but with Apple instead of Amazon.
“I visited Google, Intel and Apple. All these companies are looking for online workers,” said The President,“They want us to give them 100,000, 200,000 and 300,000 workers out of the Kenyan youth.”
Data from US-based layoffs tracking website Layoffs.fyi shows that 224,503 tech workers have lost their jobs in 2023 alone so far. Other companies such as X, formerly Twitter, has been laying off some workers since Elon Musk took over.Amazon sent home 27,000 job cuts or 8 per cent of its 1.5 million employees worldwide.Apple on its part eliminated “a small number of roles” within its corporate retail teams, per a Bloomberg report in April.
Kenyans are also more concerned as they do not know when the promises will be fulfilled.Kenyans went nuts on X formerly twitter.
@RasJohnNjui on X formerly Twitter,”WSR, the new conman in town.”
@KItuisFinest on X formerly Twitter,”Its very bad for an employee to lie to his/her employer/Boss, Ruto doesn’t know Kenyans are his Boss! Even those Companies combined their direct Employed work force is estimated to be 460k How will they employ 300K Kenyans?”
Unemployment still remains as the biggest obstacle facing the country with majority of the population struggling to make ends meet. Kenya unemployment rate for 2022 was 5.50%, a 0.14% decline from 2021. Kenya unemployment rate for 2021 was 5.64%, a 0.03% increase from 2020.