The failure of success and the success of failure: The Youth Polytechnic Programme in Kenya

Abstract

Despite its successful expansion over the past two decades, Kenya's Youth Polytechnic Programme1 is widely regarded as having failed to achieve its original objectives. The programme was supposed to provide a non‐formal training to unemployed school‐leavers in skills directly related to local income‐generating opportunities. Critics, especially amongst the influential Aid Community, have complained of excessive formalization and an orientation in the polytechnics to certification and paid employment. A recent national tracer study seems to confirm the programme's marginal impact. This paper reassesses the development of the programme, using a framework derived from Sabatier's work on implementation. Taking account of the inadequate premises upon which the programme was launched, the deficiencies in legal structure, the resource overload, and the socio‐economic and cultural environment, the programme's ‘failures’ can be seen as a successful adaption to prevailing pressures and constraints. The real failure has been in the lack of learning from practice, which has prevented a realistic assessment of the programme's impact and potential. Wedded to the programme's initial ideals, the impact of policy prescriptions upon polytechnic practice has been limited, and in some respects even counter‐productive.

Managing the Implementation of Development Policies: Problems and Solutions

“…This is an interesting case because 'failure' from one perspective turned out to be success from another -but that is another story (see Dey, 1990). The programme rested on a number of dubious assumptions about cause and effect: that urban unemployment would create pressure for rural jobs; that non-formal training is a cost-effective way of increasing rural skills and productivity; that there were no status problems with non-formal education; that training would act as a catalysts for rural economic development; and that the socio-economic effects of migration on rural development are negative.…”