Unemployment is a huge problem in Kenya. Even the most educated have a tough time finding a job and an estimated 70% of people between the ages of 18 and 35 are currently out of work.
This is why Claudia Wagenaar and two of her fellow masters students from TU Delft decided to focus on this problem for the project they worked on for the 2016 Student Battle. Eight teams from around the Netherlands participated in this edition of the annual competition. Each one collaborated with a startup company located in a developing country and the winners will get the opportunity to further develop their project on site. “After checking out the different projects, this one was an immediate fit for us. The project was located in Kenya, where I have been a few times and where my parents sponsor a primary school,” Wagenaar said. “The fact that it is in Kenya interested us all very much, as helping a project in a third world country is something we all were very interested in doing.”
Wagenaar and her colleagues formed an organisation called SCR Consulting in the spring and began developing a business strategy plan with Kunhustle.com, a startup in Kenya that helps match employees with employers. “One of the challenges Kunhustle has to deal with at this point is keeping up the quality on the platform. This is where education comes in,” Wagenaar said. “With the help of assessment software, we try to determine the skills of freelancers on the platform. When combining this with education, we can raise the overall quality of the skills on the platform.”
Wagenaar and her team members spent the month of May collaborating with their colleagues at Kunhustle while they drew further support via a crowdfunding campaign and a fundraising barbecue in Delft. Unfortunately, SCR Consulting didn’t win the competition. Team Solar Drive, also from Delft, won the top honour on 17 June and will go on to work with a company in Ethiopia that manufactures portable solar panels.
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