If your son scored a first class honours and was offered a job by employers like Safaricom, Pricewaterhouse, EABL, central bank etc, would you advice him to turn them down (like the guy did), and go to kitui to farm cabbages, and rear cows, so that he can be his own boss?

In my case I'd advice him to take up that management trainee job and work hard to become the CEO/boss of the company in a few yrs time. And also tell him to pursue his passion of farming cabbages on weekends instead of spending sat and sun in phombe joints. Or hire a manager for the farming venture.

I think we are all made differently and have different aspirations. Whereas some of us would opt to pursue our careers/professions in our organisations and work to rise to the top, others would be glad to go juakali and start machinani and earn a living from some cows and quails. Anyway at the end of the day what matters is the money. But if i were to chose between a jetset lifestyle as a top corporate executive and a farmer's life in kitui, then for me it's the former. I believe i can always grow cabbages anytime as a side hustle, and even in retirement. What if Lupita Nyongo had thrown away her degree in drama from Yale and gone to rear goats in Nyalgunga so as to be her own boss?

Exactly.

The largest problem facing Africa is food security. If you go through the story carefully, his farm is now being used for research/education in this critical area. Interestingly, he is doing it in an area that has been known of food shortage. Maybe he will proof that with a little bit of investment, no area of this country should suffer food shortage. About the CEO issue, I wonder how many of them are earning 16m. Majority have been employed to create and/further other people's dreams. Many leaves the dreams of their employers. As you rightly put it, kila nyani na starehe zake.

Then we should encourage all our newly graduated doctors , lawyers, engineers, accountants, architects, statisticians etc to go into farming to ensure food security......and they will live their dream and even earn more than CEOs .

And also the same for the statistician with his first class honours, let him set his practice/trade as a statistician/data expert/market research expert etc. Amen.

Just the other day in a different thread we were asking how comes we import the most basic of things yet we have engineering graduates every other year. Bottom line is majority will graduate and start looking for the jobs leading to zero innovation. Our leadership is also a product of the same line of thought and thus invests very little money in R&D...Yet the few who attempt to be different are condemned for not choosing the nice path of employment. That is not sustainable. In fact the current wage bill debate has something to do with this mentality. The will always be a large number of people who will go for employment, but we also need to start even a bigger number trying out different things, otherwise who will employ those who love being employed? The large corporates that we admire to work for, the IBMs, the EABLs, Safaricoms, KCBs n such others were one day very tiny and it took the courage of a few to test out un-tried waters to have what is so attractive today that @Jagg has a few names to mention to his son when its time to guide himon picking the MManagement Trainee path.

Kenya would be way waaaayyy ahead in terms of development if your questions were answered.

How many cars do we have on our roads? What does that mean? Someone worked hard, then took his money to Japan, Germany etc. Money which if re-invested here would have yielded more and more and more. In addition to the cars is machinery, factory inputs, phones, computers, even clothes!!!! etc

It is people with sheep and/or slave mentality that are the true enemies of Kenya. People who'd not rather think but follow the norm. We need to re-invent our education systems, have kids come up with projects immediately they get out of their diapers. We need to have them believe in themselves.

If there is one thing that is clear, is that there is no wealthy person that is employed. NONE. No person who's left a mark, a name who was employed. They all believed in themselves enough to employ themselves.