Why Every Kenyan Under 35 Wants to Leave

 

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that has settled over Kenya's young people.

It is not simply tiredness. It is the exhaustion of trying.

Trying to find a job. Trying to start a business. Trying to pay rent. Trying to afford food. Trying to remain hopeful. Trying to believe that the next year will be better than the last one.

And after trying for long enough, something begins to change.

You stop asking, “How can I make it here?”

You start asking, “Where else can I go?”

That is the question quietly occupying the minds of an entire generation.

Walk into a Kenyan university today and you will find young people studying courses they hope will eventually take them out of the country. Scroll through social media and there are endless conversations about scholarships, work permits, au pair programmes, overseas jobs, foreign universities and countries offering opportunities. Nurses are looking abroad. Engineers are looking abroad. Teachers are looking abroad. IT professionals are looking abroad. Even people who once dreamed of building businesses in Kenya are increasingly wondering whether their ambitions would be easier to pursue somewhere else.

It is easy to dismiss this as young people chasing greener grass. It is not. Sometimes the grass isn't necessarily greener. Sometimes you are simply tired of standing on soil that refuses to produce anything. Consider the ordinary Kenyan trying to build a life.

They wake up and go to work, assuming they are lucky enough to have a job. A significant portion of their salary disappears into rent. Food costs money. Transport costs money. Electricity costs money. Internet costs money. Healthcare costs money. School fees are waiting somewhere in the future. Family members may need help. Emergencies arrive without warning.

And somehow, after everything is paid, there is almost nothing left. Then someone tells them to save.

Save what?

This is the frustration that rarely appears in economic speeches. A person can be employed and still feel poor. They can have qualifications and still feel stuck. They can work hard every day and still watch the cost of living move faster than their income.

And if they lose their job? There may be hundreds of other qualified people waiting for the same opportunity. So they send applications. One application. Then another. Then another. No response.

“Dear Applicant, we regret to inform you…”

Again. And again. Eventually, the rejection emails stop hurting because expectations have already died.

For those who manage to find work, another reality often awaits. Long hours. Modest salaries. Difficult commutes. Little job security. Managers who demand loyalty while offering little stability. Years of experience that somehow still aren't enough.

Then comes the advice: “Work hard. Your time will come.”

But what if your time never comes? What if you spend your twenties surviving and enter your thirties still waiting for life to begin? This is where the desire to leave becomes more complicated than immigration. People are not simply running after dollars, pounds or euros. They are running after possibility.

They want to wake up believing that effort might actually lead somewhere.

They want to know that if they study, there will be an opportunity to use what they learned. If they work hard, they might be rewarded. If they start a business, the environment will not suffocate it before it has a chance to grow. If they follow the rules, the rules will also work for them.

Above all, they want dignity.

There is something deeply humiliating about being constantly told that you are the future while being given very little reason to believe that you actually have one. Young Kenyans have heard speeches about being “the leaders of tomorrow” for as long as they can remember. Tomorrow keeps moving.

Meanwhile, leadership feels increasingly disconnected from the reality of ordinary life. Politicians argue, campaign, make promises, change alliances and deliver speeches while ordinary people calculate whether they can afford the next shopping trip.

The disconnect becomes unbearable.

Imagine being 27 years old, educated, ambitious and willing to work, yet unable to see a realistic path toward owning a home, raising a family comfortably or building financial security.

Kenya has some of the most ambitious, creative and energetic young people in Africa. They are building businesses, creating technology, making music, producing films, developing new ideas and finding ways to survive in circumstances that would break many people elsewhere.

These are exactly the people a country should desperately want to keep. But when the most ambitious people begin looking for exits, the question should not simply be, “Why are young people leaving?”

The more uncomfortable question is:

What are we doing that makes staying feel like the riskier decision?

And if Kenya cannot convince its young people that such a future is possible here, no amount of patriotic speeches will stop them from looking elsewhere. You cannot tell an entire generation that they are the future while giving them no reason to believe there is a future worth staying for.