Kenya Keeps Telling Its Youth To Hustle. Who Is Teaching Them To Build Wealth?

By Adrian Munji

Kenya has become very good at telling young people how to make money. The bigger question is whether we are teaching them what to do with it once they do.

If you are a young Kenyan, you have probably heard the word “hustle” more times than you can count. Find a side hustle. Start a business. Learn digital skills. Get a job. Freelance. Sell something online. Find another way to make money. And honestly, I understand why we hear it so much. Making a decent income in Kenya, especially when you are young, is not easy. The pressure to become financially independent starts early.

But there is one part of the conversation I think we don’t talk about nearly enough: What happens after you make the money?

Because making KSh10,000 is one thing; knowing what to do with that KSh10,000 is another. We have become very good at telling young Kenyans how to make money, but we are not nearly as good at teaching them how to keep it, grow it, and eventually turn it into something they own. And I think that needs to change.

We Teach Young People How to Earn, But Not Always What to Do with the Money

Walk into a Kenyan university and money is already a major part of the conversation. Students are looking for internships, freelancing, running small businesses, selling clothes, creating content, tutoring, or trying to turn whatever skill they have into an income. There is nothing wrong with any of this—in fact, I think it is a good thing.

The problem is that the conversation often ends at earnings. We constantly ask: How do I make KSh10,000? How do I increase my income? How do I get a better-paying job? How do I start another side hustle? Those are important questions, but other questions deserve just as much attention:

• How much should I save?
• When should I start investing?
• What exactly am I investing in?
• What is an asset?
• What is the difference between savings and investing?
• How do I protect myself from losing money?

These are questions many young people only start asking much later in life, and that is a problem. Kenya’s National Financial Inclusion Strategy for 2025–2028 states that only 15 percent of higher-education students were being reached through financial-literacy programmes, with a target of reaching 80 percent by 2028. Think about that for a moment. We have a huge population of young people passing through universities and colleges, preparing to enter the workforce and make some of the biggest financial decisions of their lives, yet financial education is still reaching a relatively small proportion of them.

Financial literacy is not just about knowing what a bank account is; it is about knowing what to do with the money that eventually enters that account.

Having Access to Financial Services Is Not the Same as Understanding Them

Kenya has done something remarkable with financial inclusion. Mobile money has changed the way we send, receive, and store money. Banking and financial services are increasingly accessible through a phone, and investment products that once felt distant are becoming easier for ordinary people to access.

But access is only one part of the story. You can have access to a financial product and still have no idea whether it is right for you. The 2024 FinAccess Household Survey found that 23.1 percent of Kenyans aged 18–25 were financially excluded. Among rural young people in the same age group, the figure was even higher.

The survey also found something else that caught my attention: while 81 percent of 18–25-year-olds correctly answered a question testing knowledge of interest rates, only 59.7 percent correctly answered a question on risk diversification. That difference matters. It is one thing to know that money can earn interest; it is another to understand that putting all your money into one investment can expose you to unnecessary risk. Young people don’t need to become investment professionals, but they should understand the basics before they start making serious financial decisions.

The Hustle Can Become a Cycle

There is another side to this conversation that I think we sometimes avoid. We tell young people to hustle because earning more money is important, but earning more money does not automatically mean becoming wealthier.

Imagine someone earning KSh20,000 a month who gets a better job and starts earning KSh35,000. That sounds like progress, and it is. But if their expenses also rise from KSh18,000 to KSh33,000, their financial position has not changed as much as their salary suggests. Then they need another side hustle, then another income stream, then another salary increase—and the cycle continues.

This is where I think we need to start making a clearer distinction between income and wealth. Income is what comes in; wealth is what you manage to keep, grow, and eventually own.

The answer is not for young people to stop enjoying their money—life is not supposed to be one long savings exercise. The point is simply that not every shilling has to disappear into consumption. Some of today’s income can become tomorrow’s financial security.

Young Kenyans Should Understand Ownership

For many young people, the stock market can feel like something that belongs to older, wealthy people. The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) can sound intimidating with terms like shares, dividends, market capitalization, brokers, and trading accounts. It can all seem like a different world.

But at its most basic level, investing in a company means participating in its ownership. Think about how many Kenyan companies young people interact with every day. We use banks, buy airtime, use telecommunications services, shop at large retailers, use insurance, and rely on digital financial services. We are constantly participating in the economy as consumers, but there is another way to participate: through ownership.

The NSE is one avenue through which Kenyans can participate in that ownership. That does not mean everyone should immediately start buying shares—investing comes with risk, and there are no guaranteed returns. It means young people should at least understand that these options exist and learn how they work before deciding whether they are appropriate for them.

The same principle applies beyond the stock market. Money-market funds, government securities, pension schemes, collective investment schemes, and productive businesses are all part of a much bigger conversation about what people can do with their money. The important thing is understanding the difference between an investment and a gamble.

Universities Have a Bigger Role to Play

I think universities can do much more here. We spend years preparing students for employment, teaching people how to become engineers, accountants, lawyers, marketers, economists, entrepreneurs, and other professionals. But becoming financially capable should also be part of becoming an adult.

A student can graduate with a degree and get their first salary without knowing how a pension works. They can negotiate a good salary without knowing how much of it they should be saving, or understand a company’s financial statements in class while having never thought seriously about their own personal financial plan.

That gap is strange. Financial literacy should not be something students encounter once during a campus financial-awareness event; it should be integrated into the wider education system through mandatory, practical workshops or non-credit foundational modules regardless of a student’s degree program.

Financial institutions also have a role to play, as do regulators and parents. But young people have a role, too. We cannot keep saying that nobody teaches us about money while refusing to learn when information is available. There is more financial information available today than ever before. The challenge is knowing what information to trust, understanding the risks, and having the discipline to apply what you learn.

We Don’t Need a Generation That Only Knows How to Hustle

I don’t think Kenya needs fewer ambitious young people; if anything, we need more of them. But I don’t want the definition of ambition to stop at earning.

A young person who learns how to earn KSh20,000 and consistently puts a portion of it toward building an emergency fund or investing is doing something fundamentally different from someone who earns the same amount and spends every shilling. A graduate who understands assets before receiving their first major salary has an advantage over someone who only begins thinking about ownership decades later.

If enough young Kenyans start thinking this way, the impact goes far beyond individual bank accounts. It affects who owns businesses, who owns shares, who has financial security, who can survive an unexpected expense, who can start a business without depending entirely on debt, and who can eventually pass something on to the next generation.

That is why I think the conversation around Kenya’s youth needs to move beyond the word “hustle.” Hustling can help you make money, but making money is only the beginning. We should be teaching young Kenyans how to save it, protect it, invest it, and eventually turn some of it into ownership.

Because the question should not only be: “How can I make more money?”
It should also be: “What am I building with the money I make?”

Kenya has spent years telling its young people to hustle. Maybe the next lesson should be about what comes after the hustle.

Read Also: Starting Early: The Wealth Advantage Many Young Kenyans Ignore