As parents, we spend years preparing our children for examinations, university admissions and professional careers. We celebrate when they become doctors, lawyers, accountants, bankers and managers. These are worthy professions. But there is a question many of us rarely ask: What businesses are we preparing our children to own?
Many middle-class families equate success with securing a prestigious job. Perhaps we understand employment better than entrepreneurship. Perhaps we fear the risks of business or feel embarrassed when our children start small. Whatever the reason, we may be teaching our children how to earn salaries without showing them how to build businesses.
Consider the irony. A child becomes a bank manager, handling money belonging to businesses. One of those businesses might be a tomato-processing factory owned by someone they went to school with. Both received an education, but one was prepared to manage money while the other was encouraged to build an enterprise, create jobs and accumulate wealth through ownership.
There is nothing wrong with being a bank manager. The question is whether we are giving our children an equal opportunity to become the people who own the businesses that banks finance.
According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics' 2025 Economic Survey, the informal sector created approximately 703,700 jobs in 2024, accounting for 90 per cent of new jobs created outside small-scale agriculture. Agriculture, manufacturing and trade are not marginal activities. They are essential parts of Kenya's productive economy.
Yet how often do we sit with our children and discuss the opportunities in these sectors?
It is not unusual to find a young person from an Asian family, educated in an international school, actively involved in a wholesale business in Gikomba. They may be selling, sourcing or manufacturing everyday products such as cooking sufurias and sweets. They understand their customers, suppliers, stock and profit margins. They are learning how commerce works from the ground up.
Meanwhile, some of us encourage our children to aspire to become chief executive officers or marketing managers of such businesses. But a more important question is this: Who owns the business my son or daughter hopes to manage?
We should not assume that every family follows the same path, nor should we dismiss professional careers. Business ownership deserves the same respect we give corporate employment.
Perhaps the problem begins with the conversations we have at home. We may overlook these opportunities, fail to understand their potential or feel ashamed to discuss them. We feel more confident announcing that our child, who attended an international school, works at PwC or Safaricom than saying they are running a farm or building a small neighbourhood bakery that could grow into a leading national brand over the next 15 years.
Why should we be embarrassed by a child who manages a productive farm, employs workers and supplies a market? A prestigious job title may impress our friends, but it does not automatically mean our children are building assets or creating employment.
Imagine a child who begins learning about the family farm at 12 and starts a small tomato-paste factory in their early twenties. The business may initially supply only a few local shops. With discipline, market research, quality control, sound financial management and reinvested profits, could it grow into a regional or multinational company over the next 20 years?
It is possible, though certainly not guaranteed. Businesses fail, markets change and capital is difficult to raise. But do we have the patience to let our children build something over time, or do we want to rush them into becoming marketing managers by the age of 28?
We must teach our children to recognise the value of processing raw materials into finished products. Tomatoes can become paste and sauce. Milk can become yoghurt and cheese. Fruits can become juices and packaged products. The opportunity lies not only in producing raw materials but also in processing, packaging, distributing and selling them.
Parents do not need to hand every child a factory. We can start with a small farming project, a shop, poultry or a product they learn to make and sell. Let them understand customers, costs, cash flow, profits and losses.
Our children can become excellent professionals while learning to build enterprises of their own. They should ask not only, “Which company will employ me?” but also, “What can I produce? What problem can I solve? What business can I build?”
We have spent generations preparing our children to enter other people's boardrooms. It is time we also prepared them to own the businesses around those boardrooms.
The goal is not to produce fewer employees. It is to raise a generation with the confidence and skills to become both capable professionals and responsible business owners.
The writer comments on topical issues
