From Waste to Work: Bridging Youth and Emerging Livelihood Opportunities in Kenya's Circular IT Sector

Electronic waste and youth unemployment are among the most pressing challenges facing Africa today, and in Kenya the two increasingly meet in the country's emerging circular IT sector. Here the repair, refurbishment and recovery of electronic devices holds real potential to reduce environmental harm while creating income for young people. This thesis asks what livelihood opportunities are emerging in that sector, and what assets, barriers and learning pathways shape whether vulnerable youth are able to pursue them. It does so through the case of the iHUB, a digital-skills and livelihoods programme run by SOS Children's Villages Kenya, using a qualitative, exploratory single embedded case study design. The evidence combines a policy-document analysis, twenty-seven key informant interviews across seventeen organisations, two participatory workshops with the iHUB team and its youth participants, and field visits to circular IT sites across Nairobi.

The study finds that real and growing opportunities are emerging across three linked segments: repair, which offers the most accessible point of entry, alongside refurbishment and e-waste management. This growth is driven by policy formalisation, in particular by the Extended Producer Responsibility regulation, together with market demand and gaps, which create entry points for employment and entrepreneurship. The training pathways into the sector nonetheless remain underdeveloped, as informal, on-the-job learning predominates and the few structured programmes are heavily oversubscribed. iHUB youth bring strong foundational skills, agency and motivation to this setting, yet their participation is limited by weak financial capital, uneven networks, a shortage of advanced hands-on skills, and social norms that still devalue manual technical work. Their interest in the sector is high but largely instrumental, with most treating circular IT as a flexible source of income and skills towards varied career aspirations. The central argument that follows is that the key constraint on youth participation is access to training, finance, tools and networks, rather than any lack of aptitude or interest.

On this basis the thesis reframes the youth-employment challenge as a question of access and empowerment rather than of youth deficit, and argues that a practical, employability-oriented training pathway, for which the iHUB is well placed, could bridge young people to the circular IT sector, provided it is matched by broader enabling conditions. Further research is nonetheless required to establish whether these emerging opportunities amount to decent work, a dimension that fell largely outside this study's scope. While circular IT may offer a route to youth employment, the sector's sustainable and just transformation will ultimately depend on reducing its reliance on imported devices and building a self-sufficient circular economy.