Analysis of Entrepreneurial Intent among Rural Youths in Njoro Sub-County, Kenya

Currently, youth unemployment is a major challenge on the African continent.The Kenyan economy is suffering the same problem with more than 70% of youths being jobless.Entrepreneurship was identified and supported as an option to solve this problem but unemployment is still increasing.This study aims to analyze the entrepreneurial intent of rural youths in the Njoro Sub-County.Specifically, the study determines the proportion of youths intending to start a business and ascertains challenges hindering the translation of business ideas into viable projects.A multistage sampling method was adopted for this study and 246 respondents were selected.The descriptive statistics results showed that 93.9% of the youths were intending to start a business to curb the unemployment problem.The results from the Friedman test ranked that the most limiting challenges were lack of capital, high cost of business set-up, legal restrictions, high risks to the business environment, and no access to land were significant in hindering youths' entrepreneurship.Therefore, there is a need for support from government and private institutions in terms of training, workshops, capital, resources, and also tax holidays or discounts for new small firms.