Let us also factor in on the job training to improve our skill sets. Software engineers become masters of their craft by doing projects and by exchanging (code and concepts) with their peers. A classroom setting possibly contributes to less than 10% of all their success.

There have been a number of comments in these (BPO) discussions comparing us with India, South Africa and Mauritius.

We cannot rely on the whims of those with negative (but often valid) perceptions towards us. We need to give ourselves a chance that is of our own creation.

@ 40 Million (our 2010 population) growing at 2.5% (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ke.html and others estimate our population growth @ almost 2.7% per annum) we will add 1 Million Kenyans to our population next year. 2030 is sure to see us with a population of at least 60 Million.

With that in mind and given the fact political instability is the current (and unfortunately valid) excuse to avoid Kenya, we would be most ignorant NOT to focus most of our BPO efforts internally. This will build up LOCAL companies and on a REGIONAL basis. This will build up local talent who may otherwise be demoralized for not being Western enough to Foreign BPO companies.

bitange@jambo.co.ke wrote:

Walubengo,
With respect to capacity building, the Government has done the following
Established Multimedia University to focus on IT Skills Development;
Contracted the Central Bureau of Statistics through CCK to conduct ICT
Skills inventory in Kenya and Set up a task force to look into Skills
development as recommended by MaKinsey in the just concluded Value
Proposition.  We are in the process of appointing other stakeholders into
the committee.

Although we do not have a sector strategy on Capacity building, the
Governemnt takes issues of skills development very seriously. This is a
matter that NESC emphasizes as key to our competitiveness.  In this regard
we look forward to a quick finalization of the skills inventory and the
task force recommendation.

Regards


Ndemo.

-Day 5 of 10- BPO Discussions, Human Capacity Issues

Morning all,

I trust you had a refreshing weekend.  Today I want to introduce the theme
on Human Resource Development for the BPO industry.  The Researchers found
that India, S.Africa and Mauritius had a comprehensive inventory of their
skill-base that was also available for Validation by prospective employers
and investors.  Another observation was ofcourse the sheer numbers of
Indian graduates (millions) that made it the largest base of highly
skilled pool of graduates with strong mathematical/scientific orientation.
 Whereas, Mauritius was producing only 10,000 (university) graduates per
year compared to Kenya's 30,000 per year, Mauritius had the advantage of
properly documenting their national graduates database and marketing it
appropriately to potential clients in Europe/America.  In addition, the
Researchers noted that Mauritius had a government funded but
Private-Sector oriented ICT Academy that produced graduates specificially
for the ICT industry.

In Kenya, the Researchers observed that apart from the lack of a national
database on the available skills/graduates, some of the BPO operators were
engaged in vicious poaching cycles where Agents trained in-house by one
Operater are immediately hired by the Competing Operators. It was noted,
that an attempt has been made by the .KE Government to create an
Industry-specific University (Multimedia University College of Kenya) to
address the HR gap but its success or otherwise will remain to be seen in
a few years time.  The Researchers also noted that Kenya's
English-speaking labor force had an edge over the Indian one given that
the average Kenyan had a "neutral" accent unlike the Indian graduate who
tended to have an "ethnic" accent that often distracted the Euro-American

%3


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