If there is something that God gave to human being is talent and if there is something that one can effectively utilize to make their lives better, then it is talent.
Someone once said that the most useless person in the world is one who sits on his/talent only to realize that he was having it when it is already too late to use.
The technological age has been blamed for ‘killing’ talent as well as creativity among the youth both in Kenya and the world over. A school of thought says that technology has made everything available of the young people and the old alike, completely killing the old way of thinking, being creative and coming up with solutions.
Despite the fact that technology, especially the age of social media has been widely blamed for killing talent, several entrepreneurs in Kenya and beyond have come up with some online platforms that are helping young people to grow, utilize and use their skills to earn a living.
“Technology is like fire. It has its good side and its bad side. It all depends on how one uses it. If one uses it well, the results will be good and if one uses it for the wrong reasons, the results will obviously be wrong,” said Korir Isaac, a journalist and an IT expert in Nairobi.
“There are some platforms in Kenya for instance, that specifically support skills and talents especially among the youth. For a talent or a skill to grow, it needs motivation and guidance and one of the motivations of talent is helping a person with a talent to earn a living from the talent s/he has. That way, they will always work to better their talent and skills,” said Emmanuel Soroba, the Founder and CEO of FiveSok, a Kenyan online marketplace that offers opportunities to people with skills and talents to showcase them to potential buyers. The platform also allows people who want experts for small-scale jobs to find them on the platform.
“I think the Kenyan youth has skills. He only needs a platform that will help skyrocket his skills to greater heights,” said Brian Gesora Mwasi, one of the organizers of Gebeya, another online marketplace with roots in Kenya that offers youths in the ICT sector a chance to be trained and then showcase them to the market.
