How Kenya’s Youth Green Manifesto Could Shape the 2027 Climate Agenda

Posted by OAY Kenya on 21-Jul-2026

Every year, Kenya's young people watch the same story repeat itself: the rains fail, or they come all at once and flood their homes. The land they were promised a future on is drying out or washing away, and the rooms where decisions get made rarely have a chair pulled out for them.

So, young people in the country stopped waiting for an invitation that may or may not arrive. They organized, documented, consulted each other across sixty organizations and every corner of the country, and wrote down exactly what needs to change, and who is responsible for changing it.

The Youth Green Manifesto, developed under the OAY-led Erasmus+ “Our World, Our Planet” project is the outcome of these consultations. A product of two years of consultations, summits, and survey work, distilled into four pillars and a set of demands specific enough to hold institutions accountable. It is reflective and representative of the voices of youths in the country.

Here’s what’s in it, and why it matters now.

The Money Isn't Reaching the People Doing the Work

Kenya has climate financing mechanisms on paper, but access remains a problem year in and year out. The manifesto illuminates this gap in the process, identifying complex applications, restrictive eligibility, and debt-heavy public models that are actively failing the people they claim to serve as the key stumbling blocks.

The design flaws in climate financing are quite evident and examples like the Youth Enterprise Development Fund losing KSh 2.09 billion to defaults, and the Uwezo Fund’s repayment rate sitting at 43% are all the proof needed to realize something has to give.

Pillar 1 demands a different model entirely: a ring-fenced National Youth Climate Fund built on grants and technical support rather than debt, small-grant facilities that don’t require a law firm to navigate, and a hard floor at least 5% of the proposed KSh 5 trillion National Infrastructure Fund reserved specifically for youth-led climate innovation. This is the difference between inviting young people to apply for scraps and building infrastructure that positions them to lead. It assures youths finances for their climate led innovations and efforts.

Consultation Is Not Participation

Kenya’s constitution already guarantees youth a seat at the table — Articles 10(2), 1(2), 118(1)(b), and 196(1)(b) say so explicitly. The problem begins after the invitations are sent out. Youths are often invited to tick a box and ensure compliance but when it comes down to the actual decision-making their voices and presence is often absent in the room.

Pillar 2 calls for something more binding — mandatory youth representation in climate governance bodies and international delegations, a fully funded and operational National Youth Council, and continuous engagement mechanisms that hold ground: public reporting, participatory budgeting, and amendments to the Political Parties Act that would force parties to build climate commitments into their actual electoral manifestos ahead of 2027.

Representation that depends on who can afford to get to the room or connections to the decision makers is neither representation nor beneficial to the young people and the fight for climate justice. It’s an illusion of progress that will never actually be realized.

The Green Economy Is Being Built Without the Skills to Staff It

UNICEF’s finding is clear: less than half of young people who want green careers feel prepared for them. Meanwhile, Kenya is expanding e-mobility, circular economy, and waste management sectors that need exactly this talent. That mismatch is identified in the manifesto as a training and infrastructure failure.

Pillar 3 pushes for real digital infrastructure in rural areas and informal settlements, climate and green entrepreneurship built into curricula at every level, and protections for the young people doing this work publicly — legal safeguards against the cyber harassment increasingly aimed at climate advocates and environmental defenders.

It also takes direct aim at the predatory lending trapping motorcycle riders and gig workers in the electric mobility sector, where “green transition” has too often meant new tech layered onto old exploitation.

Climate Change Is Not Gender-Neutral, and Policy Can't Keep Pretending It Is

Only about 60% of Kenyans have access to safe drinking water. The burden of the other 40% — hauling water, gathering firewood, absorbing indoor air pollution from paraffin and charcoal — falls disproportionately on women and girls. This is not a side effect of climate change. It is a structural outcome of who gets left out of planning rooms.

Pillar 4 demands women’s equitable access to land, climate financing, and green enterprise opportunities; safe, harassment-free mobility systems, including within electric transport; and gender-disaggregated climate data so policy stops being built on incomplete information. It also calls for climate-resilient upgrades to informal settlements — flood control, drainage, clean water — where the cost of governance failure lands hardest and first.

Why This Can't Be Another Document on a Shelf

The manifesto is clear-eyed about the stakes of doing nothing: deepened inequality, more frequent climate disasters, a shrinking window for Kenya to capitalize on its demographic dividend. Every pillar in this document represents a place where inaction has a compounding cost, measured in defaulted loans, unfilled green jobs, unsafe commutes, and communities left to face floods and droughts with no seat in the rooms where response plans get written.

This is a call to action, and it names the entities being called: national and county governments, development partners, private sector actors, and civil society organizations. Other than that, it is also a call to the young people and organizations that built it. The manifesto commits its authors to something specific — pushing political parties and electoral candidates to fold these commitments into their 2027 manifestos, and to keep documenting and monitoring youth-led work so it can’t be ignored or erased.

An inclusive green transition was never going to be optional.

The Youth Green Manifesto makes the terms clear and concise. The work now is holding the line on them — in county budget hearings, in procurement audits, in the fine print of the National Infrastructure Fund, and in every room where the next generation of Kenya’s climate policy gets decided.

Article by Faith Ndanu