University students and youth leaders from institutions of higher learning across the country have launched the Friends of Eliud Owalo Universities Chapter, a national youth movement backing former ICT Cabinet Secretary Eliud Okech Owalo’s bid for the presidency in the August 2027 General Election.
The youth-led initiative, unveiled at a national launch forum, aims to mobilise young people around what it terms Kenya’s “Third Liberation” agenda, which focuses on economic empowerment, ownership and inclusion of youth in the country’s productive sectors.
Speaking during the launch, the organisers said the movement seeks to place young people at the centre of economic transformation by tackling unemployment, underemployment, exclusion from ownership and limited access to economic opportunity.“
Youth under the age of 35 make up nearly 75 per cent of Kenya’s population. Their empowerment is no longer a future issue; it is an urgent national priority,” the group said in a statement.
The students warned that continued marginalisation of young people from the economy risks fuelling crime, substance abuse and social instability, insisting that youth must be treated as active contributors rather than passive beneficiaries.
“We are not the leaders of tomorrow. We are the present,” the statement read.
The group cited widespread joblessness, weak school-to-work transition pathways, limited access to affordable credit and exclusion from key value chains as major challenges facing young people, despite high levels of education and skills.
They criticised what they described as an economic structure that confines youth to low-paying and informal roles such as boda boda riding, matatu touting, casual labour and political mobilisation, while economic decision-making and wealth accumulation remain concentrated among older generations.
According to the youth leaders, their support for Owalo is anchored on his proposed economic agenda, which prioritises value addition, production and retention of earnings at the point of production—sectors where young people form the bulk of the workforce.
The Third Liberation agenda proposes restructuring key sectors including agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing, mining, ICT, construction, sports, creative industries and the blue economy to enable youth to participate as producers, processors and owners rather than casual labourers.
They argued that local value addition would generate employment across aggregation, processing, logistics, storage, packaging, marketing and enterprise support services.
On taxation, the youth welcomed proposals attributed to Owalo that include removing digital taxes for young people, reducing internet costs by 50 per cent, lowering income tax from 35 per cent to 20 per cent, cutting VAT from 16 per cent to 10 per cent, and reducing corporate tax by five per cent for a three-year cycle.
The group also raised concern over Kenya’s growing public debt burden, arguing that young people are being forced to repay loans accumulated through non-productive borrowing and corruption.
They said an Owalo-led administration would pursue a zero-budget-deficit policy, restrict borrowing to self-financing projects and conduct a comprehensive legal audit of public debt through the Office of the Auditor-General.
On corruption, the students endorsed Owalo’s pledge of zero tolerance, including radical digitalisation of government services, real-time public finance tracking and the reopening of unresolved mega-corruption cases for forensic investigation and asset recovery.
Citing his tenure as ICT Cabinet Secretary, the group highlighted the expansion of digital infrastructure, establishment of ward-level digital hubs and rollout of youth digital skills programmes as evidence of his pro-youth record.
They said the initiatives trained more than half a million young people, improved access to digital jobs and strengthened inclusion in the digital economy.
The youth also welcomed proposals for free primary and day secondary education, expanded Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) aligned to industry demand, and enhanced youth financing through SACCOs, cooperatives and credit guarantee schemes.
The movement said the Third Liberation agenda responds directly to grievances raised during the 2024 Gen-Z protests, including the high cost of living, unemployment, corruption, police brutality and exclusion of young people from decision-making.
They described the protests as a collective demand to fix what they termed a broken system rather than isolated events.
The Chapter announced plans to organise across campuses and counties to build a nationwide youth movement focused on economic ownership and meaningful participation, rather than political tokenism.
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