ABSTRACT

Today’s dynamic business environment and global competition necessitate the identification of new ways to enhance entrepreneurship training especially to the youth. This not only help them to better entrepreneurs or be self-employed but also contribute to increase the perception of important entrepreneurship aspects, as well as create a real vision of entrepreneurship problems. The main objective of the study therefore was to establish the effect of entrepreneurship training on entrepreneurial behaviour of the Strengthening Rural Youth Development through Enterprise programme in Bomet County. The study was guided by the following specific objectives: to determine the effect of entrepreneurship attitude, skills, knowledge and social network on entrepreneurial behaviour of the youth in Bomet County. The study reviewed the theoretical foundation focusing on the Theory of Planned Behaviour and Entrepreneurial Event Model as well as the relevant empirical literature guided by the specific objectives which provided better understanding of the concepts and their relationships. Descriptive design was used in collecting the data from respondents because it ensures complete description of the situation, making sure that there is minimum bias in the collection of data. The target population was five hundred whereby a sample size of hundred respondents was drawn comprising of entrepreneurship trainers and youth trainees who were still attending entrepreneurship training programme in Bomet County. Questionnaires was used for collecting data containing mainly closed ended questions to the sample respondents thus ensuring that each respondent received the same set of questions. The data collected was then cleaned, checked for errors, coded and then analyzed using descriptive statistics employing mean and standard deviation with the aid of SPSS. Data collected and analyzed was finally presented in various formats such as charts, graphs and tables. From the regression analysis, all the factors of entrepreneurship training studied, that is, attitude, skills, knowledge and social network/norms have a significant effect on entrepreneurial behaviour of rural youth in Bomet County. 77.3 % of the variance in attitude, 70.6 % of the variance in skills, 89.7 % of the variance in knowledge, and 78.2% of the variance in social network representing the independent variables as shown by linear regression has a significant effect on the entrepreneurial behaviour. All the predictor variables, that is, attitude, skills, knowledge and social network βvalues were positive indicating that they directly proportional to entrepreneurial behaviour of rural youth in Bomet County, in which case an improvement in attitude, skills, knowledge and positive support from the social network causes a positive change towards entrepreneurial behaviour of rural youth in the County. The study therefore recommends that both the national and county government should make flexible policies to attract young graduates to be entrepreneursto develop their socio-economic status. Also, they should facilitate entrepreneurial training programmes for the youth so as to enable them to develop the right skills, knowledge and competence in entrepreneurship. The study also recommends that social groups, families and peer groups should share their knowledge, skills, ideas and network with one another so as to build stronger entrepreneurial behaviour and ensure business success for the youth