Gen Zs Rejecting Employment To Start Their Own Businesses- Report
22 per cent of them indicated their desire to stand on their own two feet career-wise ultimately, with 12 per cent willing to make their names as TikTok creators and brand influencers.
Viral Tea Ke Writer 
Many young Kenyans under the Generation Z category are looking towards starting their businesses over maintaining their employee status, an indication of how the legacy 9-5 jobs are losing their appeal today with the surge in internet connectivity.
A report by Africa Uncensored titled Fame, Fortune and Freedom; Decoding the Shape of the Dream for Kenya’s Gen Z indicated that the dream job for most Gen Zs is flexible and online, with a majority of them willing to be self-employed or run a business.
22 per cent of them indicated their desire to stand on their own two feet career-wise ultimately, with 12 per cent willing to make their names as TikTok creators and brand influencers.
12 per cent wanted to work as doctors, never mind the doctors' strike that has been stretching for nearly two months now.
Types of jobs preferred by Gen Z. /AFRICA UNCENSORED
The rest desired to work in office jobs(10 per cent), engineers (9 per cent and musicians (8 per cent). Farming ranked on the lower side at 3 per cent alongside online writers, watchmen, boda boda riders and Uber drivers.
Close to 80 per cent of the Gen Z surveyed highlighted that being an influencer is a real job and that they see potential in making a lot of money from it.
The 1,300 Gen Zs were also asked about their most important desires from their current workplaces, with 67 per cent revealing that they are working for money.
However, 33 per cent want mental health as a valuable aspect before accepting a job offer followed by a good vibe, company reputation and remote work.
In terms of morality in the process of making money, 34 per cent revealed that they believed people can make money in the right way while 23 per cent responded that making money was important regardless of how it was done.
19 per cent revealed that they do not judge individuals making money illegally but they would not do it while less than 10 per cent believed that giving bribes is unavoidable in wealth making.
It should be considered that a fair share of the influencer culture has a dark underbelly marred by card fraud, fake lifestyles, forex scammers, and illicit internet work culture in the dark web.
"Approximately 1 in 5 said they wouldn’t judge anyone for making money illegally even though they wouldn’t do it themselves. The ‘do you’ culture seems to affect not just lifestyles but to reflect the overall Gen Z beliefs around their relations with their peers and those they admire.
"About 8% think giving bribes is inevitable if one is going to be able to make money in the course of their hustle. In this instance, Gen Zs tend to poll much lower than the national average when it comes to acceptance of the kickback culture whether to access state or private services in the country," the report read in part.
Africa Uncensored prepared the report in collaboration with Odipo Dev, a full-service insight collective leveraging audience and cultural intelligence to build distinctive brands.
The 1,300 Gen Zs were surveyed face to face. According to demographers and pollsters, Gen Z are those born between 1997 and 2012, and at 27 years of age, the oldest cohorts in the cluster who are now well settled into the workplace.
Undertaken in mid-April 2024, the study covered six counties such as Nairobi, Eldoret, Kisumu, Machakos, Mombasa, and Meru.
