Consumer Insight’s new survey sheds surprising light on the attitudes, preferences, and mindset of Kenyan youth.

We ventured into the dense jungle of trends, lifestyles, selfies, and hashtags inhabited by Gen Zs and millennials and came up brandishing compelling insights into what defines Kenyan youth. Exploring wide-ranging topics from leisure activities to health, drugs, and everything in between, here’s a taster of what we discovered:

Concerning people whose lifestyle or achievements are most esteemed, Kenyan youth are characteristically unambiguous: Akothee and President Ruto are the top admired personalities among females and males respectively. Akothee makes her debut in this list traditionally reserved for politicians. Interestingly, all the women in the top 10 are overwhelmingly nominated by females. The influencer game in the youth demographic is apparently a battle of the sexes. But the influence the top two wield is a whole ‘nother bag o’ tricks. Although Akothee and President Ruto are adored equally, the latter is deemed more influential. Barack Obama is the most influential, while Raila Odinga and Rachel Ruto exert more inspiration than Akothee and the president. Go figure!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the G.O.A.T. debate is now closed. Lionel Messi is the undisputed preferred sports personality among Kenyan youth. CR7 comes in a distant second, and Kylian Mbappe sprints into third place. Now, despite running the first (and only!) sub-two-hour marathon in history—a feat never before achieved by a mortal being—Eliud Kipchoge only manages fourth place in the admiration of Kenyan youth. A whopping eight out of the 10 most admired sports personalities are all footballers, with only two being non-footballing Kenyans. There is not a single woman on the list!

Global trends notwithstanding, the apple rarely falls far from the tree and, in some respects, Kenyan youth are more traditional than you might expect. Granted, they may not look like their parents; they certainly don’t speak like them or—God forbid—dress like them, but sometimes they are like peas in a pod. For instance, male circumcision ranks as the second most approved traditional practice. The obvious losers are arranged marriages, siblings marrying in order of birth, and female circumcision. Except for this trifecta, the youth are basically old wine in new wineskins.

Now barely two decades ago, mobile phone ownership was the ultimate statement of sophistication. One had only to whip out the gadget, and heads would turn. It conferred on the owner a modicum of bragging rights. Well, the phone revolution many thought would not happen in their lifetimes has passed like a ship in the night. Today, 88% of Kenyan youth have a mobile phone line, with 52% having more than one. Phone line ownership increases with age and by age 20, almost everyone has one, a phenomenon observed across all socio-economic groups. Mobiles are no longer a preserve of the aristocracy.

Stop the press! The number one artist in Kenya is…Tanzanian? And that is hardly the big reveal. Out of the top 10 most popular artists among Kenyan youth, an eye-watering eight are all Tanzanians. To all intents and purposes, Bongo music has found a permanent home across the border for the foreseeable future because, as the cliché goes, the youth are tomorrow’s leaders. But there might be salvation on the horizon: this leading Tanzanian on the Kenyan music scene has seen a steady decline in popularity over the years. The law of averages dictates that the rest should follow a similar graph. That notwithstanding, the only Kenyans in the list feature at sixth and ninth…a youthful indictment of Kenyan music if ever there was one. Which leaves a lingering aftertaste: are local artists overrated, or is this a case of the prophet not being accepted at home?

Ok…don’t tell KRA, but more than half of Kenyan youth have an income. The proportion of those earning money has been increasing over time, and the main source is employment. However, employment has been on the decline. Next up is part-time business, which cements us as a veritable Hustler Nation. Now comes the interesting part: even teens are earning an income, and the share of earning youth increases with age up to the point of 84% of 31-35-year-olds being gainfully employed. And in a tip of the hat to equality among the sexes, more than half of both males and females are out there earning.

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These discoveries (and many more!) are contained in HOLLA, a proprietary report by Consumer Insight that reveals compelling insights into what defines Kenyan youth and collates their needs, realities, and worldviews to give you an accurate definition of Kenyan millennials and Gen Zs. HOLLA covers a wide range of topics such as leisure activities, values, aspirations, sports, health, drugs, connection to roots, dating, marriage, family, product usage, computers and mobile phones, income and expenditure, financial services, and media usage – broadcast, print, and internet, and delves deep into the psyche of Kenyan youth and comes up with gems like social media habits, and then compares prevailing trends with those from previous years.

For more information on this study, contact Consumer Insight on info@ciafrica.com or +254 722 202313 / +254 722 509221.