Dear listers,
I am getting into this discussion pretty late but am sure I can still add my 2cents.
The issue of the nascent BPO sector and Konza TechnoCity are intertwined but I think we have been missing the point by a mile. I have said on this platform in the past that what is needed here mostly is the development of advanced skills in IT. This is what is going to make a difference as far as BPO is concerned. We can have greater success this way than we can have with the best marketing effort or with the brightest techno city. What will bring work to Kenya is skills, not marketing campaigns. We need to leverage on our millions of youth and give them very highly advanced technical skills, on a large scale, then the work will come automatically.
This is what experience has taught me. For instance, the Presidential Digital Talent program by ICTA is a good start. But we need this to be scaled 1000 times to make real impact. Then we need to stop Universities from offering word processing training to their students. How do we expect to compete globally if we are still training IT undergraduates on how to use a word processor? We need to teach them to think, not to be mere users of tools. We need to be makers of tools, then sell the same to the rest of the world. We need to learn to produce, not just consume. This is the challenge that we will face for a long time, and the government will continue missing the point by trying to tax people more to create development. Development should be a result of more production, not consumption.
Just my thoughts..