The obsession with white collar jobs is no longer making any meaning to one Risper Kerubo, a First Class graduate from Kenyatta University.
In 2015, Kerubo graduated with a degree in Health Sciences from Kenya's premier university but her zeal to look for a job dwindled after many attempts.
Confronted by reality, Ms Kerubo told Business Daily, she had to quickly look for a way to survive. She ventured into bananas and avocado business at Imara Daima.
“Coming from Kisii, I had watched for years my kinsmen making money by getting bananas and avocados from the countryside and selling them in Nairobi, and I thought this is something I could do as well,” she says.
Armed with some knowledge on the trade, she set up a shop in Nairobi’s Imara Daima estate in 2016. And since then she has never looked back.
“In a day I sell up to two 90kg sacks of bananas, and nearly five crates of avocados. I make a daily net profit of Sh1,000,” she says.
“I get this after deducting all the costs which include transport, capital and of course salary for my worker who I pay Sh500 daily.”
Although it was not long before she started making profit, Ms Kerubo could not immediately come to terms with the fact that she worked so hard in school and university, posting the best grades only to end up as a fruit vendor.
“Here, I was literally getting my hands dirty, yet I had worked hard at university and got the best grades and First Class honours,” she tells Enterprise.
Thousands of graduates are languishing in poverty, with many of them unable to raise capital for business like Ms Kerubo, who makes around Sh40,000 per month now.
Cases of unemployment in Kenya are synonymous. Early this year, a case of one Ms Ruth Rono from Baringo, also a First Class graduate, was highlighted in the media.
In a span of one week, thousands of well wishers offered to give her employment. She eventually settled on Energy Regulatory Commission, a state job.
“I had to take the job given to me by the President. I appeal to the companies and organisations that offered to help me to give those jobs to unemployed young graduates,” added the elated Ms Rono.