Re: [Kictanet] Re: India's Weaknesses
Eric-
Excellent idea!
There is an initiative with the World Bank Institute, led by their VP Frannie Leautier (a Tanzanian), and the Mandela Foundation to launch a series of Sci & Tech institutes in Africa. They've been fund raising etc etc. Might be worth refering to that.
But it isnt clear that the WBI initiative has really seized the necessity of co-locating good firms and good universities and good govt support together. I think the first project for a 'ctr of excellence' is in Arusha. The indian IIT's are also involved in that project.
Close cooperation across govt-pri-research-ngo is certainly much of the reasons for success, as you know, in Silicon Valley, plus Cambridge, Beijing, Sao Paulo, and of course Bangalore. (SEE new study by Harry Broadman "The New Silk Road: Chinese and Indian Initiatives in Africa", available on line thru the World Bank, where HB works.)
Now it's Africa's turn to accelerate cross sector partnerships, and start co-locating and developing these "Quad" relationships.
cheers
Ernie
Dr. Ernest J. Wilson III Center for International Development and Conflict Management University of Maryland 0145 Tydings Hall College Park, MD 20742 Tel: (301) 314-7711 Fax: (301) 314-9256 Email: ewilson@cidcm.umd.edu http://www.cidcm.umd.edu
"Eric Osiakwan" <eric@afrispa.org> 10/25/06 1:10 PM >>>
Waudo said "Perhaps something could be done now before we find ourselves in India's position"
We all know that one of the demons that has held back Africa's rise is the DE-LINK between industry and academia (research) and also with governments. Prof. Ernest Wilson's (of Maryland University) squad model makes the argument that you need a constant interaction between these constituencies for growth and innovation to take place. He argues that Silicon Valley is a clear example.
My proposition therefore as a way to answer the question above is to leverage the BPO opportunity. Most African governments are at least on board the BPO wagon so my idea is, lets establish the BPOs in the University environment given the current public policy favouring. The BPO companys can take advantage of cheap but good student labour whiles they build the real estate for their operations using university land on a "build operate and handover basis".
The Universities then get real estate which they use for their long term expansion of
infrastructure. The BPO companies get their work done cheaply and when they migrate in
Please permit me to send through Prof. Wilson's response since he is not on the list but he gives some insighful directions to the discussion. Point of correction, i meant "Quad" not "Squad". ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: "Ernest Wilson" <ewilson@cidcm.umd.edu> Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:59:15 -0400 physical the
long term, much value would have being gained. The University students get work experience for the long term job market entry and also interim cash to support their University education. This also gives the non-computer related students some basic skills and exposure and for the CS, EE etc students, they build their internal capacity not only to take calls and do word processing but more technical stuff. They would soon be writing software for those BPO companies. Mostly importantly this becomes the nucleus of the government/academia/private sector LINKINING which would grow into other areas.
Hence the value proposition of the BPO banwagon is, it gives us a foot into the door but we must move up the value chain very quickly or we would end up doing the low end jobs which would make us less competitive in the Knowledge economy.
When I proposed this to my Ghana Cyber Group friend (Yaw Owusu, leading the way with a private TechPark in Ghana) whom i have cced on this mail, he said, then the Tech Parks (BPOs + more) should be in the University/Research Environment and his example of been able to acquire land from the Ghana CSIR which is close to the University of Ghana would be a good prototype.
This is the story am going to be telling at the the first University Leaders Forum in Cape Town to which governments, academic leadership, private sector and Civil Society has being convened.
Eric here
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: waudo@signet.co.ke Reply-To: Kenya ICT Policy - kictanet <kictanet@kictanet.or.ke> Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:53:47 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
Thanks to PS Ndemo for bringing this out. As for Wafula's question, the work force survey undertaken by the CSK earlier this year revealed that there is very little linkage between what the ICT training institutions (including Universities) are producing and the requirements of the industry either now or in the foreseeable future. Certainly there appear to be no mechanisms to facilitate such linkage. Perhaps something could be done now before we find ourselves in India's position.
Kind Regards Waudo Siganga
On Wed, October 25, 2006 9:22 am, TONY WAFULA wrote:
Good lesson , though wonder whether as a country we are ready to address manpower shortage in this area. Just the other day Safaricom's Micheal Joseph was lamenting about the same...are we checking what our Universities are offering in relation to our projected needs?
Regards
Wafula
bitange@jambo.co.ke wrote: Hi Edith, You must have been blogging.
Regards
Ndemo.
Certainly, a great lesson to learn from.
Thanks for sharing the article!
At / * 12:56 PM 10/24/2006, bitange@jambo.co.ke wrote / a *crit:
Dear All, I think there are good lessons to learn from the article below.
Regards
Ndemo.
October 17, 2006 Skills Gap Hurts Technology Boom in India By SOMINI SENGUPTA
TIRUCHENGODE, India
As its technology companies soar to the outsourcing skies, India is bumping up against an improbable challenge. In a country once regarded as a bottomless well of low-cost, ready-to-work, English-speaking engineers, a shortage looms.
India still produces plenty of engineers, nearly 400,000 a year at last count. But their competence has become the issue.
A study commissioned by a trade group, the National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, found only one in four engineering graduates to be employable. The rest were deficient in the required technical skills, fluency in English or ability to work in a team or deliver basic oral presentations.
The skills gap reflects the narrow availability of high-quality college education in India and the galloping pace of the country's service-driven economy, which is growing faster than nearly all but China's. The software and service companies provide technology services to foreign companies, many of them based in the United States. Software exports alone expanded by 33 percent in the last year.
The university systems of few countries would be able to keep up with such demand, and India is certainly having trouble. The best and most selective universities generate too few graduates, and new private colleges are producing graduates of uneven quality.
Many fear that the labor pinch may signal bottlenecks in other parts of the economy. It is already being felt in the information technology sector.
With the number of technology jobs expected to nearly double to 1.7 million in the next four years, companies are scrambling to find fresh engineering talent and to upgrade the schools that produce it.
Some companies are training faculty members themselves, offering courses tailored to industry needs and improving college labs and libraries. They are rushing to get first choice of would-be engineers long before they have completed their course work. And they are fanning out to small, remote colleges that almost no one had heard of before. The country's most successful technology concerns can no longer afford to hire only
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-- Eric M.K Osiakwan Executive Secretary AfrISPA (www.afrispa.org) Tel: + 233.21.258800 Fax: + 233.21.258811 Cell: + 233.244.386792 Handle: eosiakwan Snail Mail: Pmb 208, Accra-North Office: BusyInternet - 42 Ring Road Central, Accra-North Blog: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/eric/ Slang: "Tomorrow Now" --
-- Eric M.K Osiakwan Executive Secretary AfrISPA (www.afrispa.org) Tel: + 233.21.258800 Fax: + 233.21.258811 Cell: + 233.244.386792 Handle: eosiakwan Snail Mail: Pmb 208, Accra-North Office: BusyInternet - 42 Ring Road Central, Accra-North Blog: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/eric/ Slang: "Tomorrow Now" --
You can now regulate accent. Read article beloe from the Associated Press. Regards Ndemo. IBM develops program for call centers By RAJESH MAHAPATRA, AP Business Writer Tue Nov 7, 4:37 PM ET Even as Indian call centers have thrived in the past decade, helping U.S. companies cut costs and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs here, they have faced a seemingly insurmountable problem: Most Indian employees speak heavily accented English. Now IBM Corp.'s India Research Lab says it has a way to help operators fix the harsh consonants, local idioms and occasionally different grammar of Indian English, often a source of frustration of those who call in search of tech support and other information. IBM, which operates large call center facilities here, has developed a Web-based training technology that can help improve language skills of operators. Although the technology was initially developed for its call center employees in India, it has broad applicability for individuals as well as in schools and businesses, said Ashish Verma, who led efforts to develop the tool at the India Research Lab in New Delhi. The program evaluates grammar, pronunciation, comprehension and other spoken-language skills, and provides detailed scores for each category. It uses specially adapted speech-recognition software to score the pronunciation of passages and the stressing of syllables for individual words. The technology also consists of voice-enabled grammar evaluation tests, which identify areas for improvement by highlighting shortcomings and providing examples of correct pronunciation and grammar. "Most of the existing solutions are available offline, where you listen to model speakers and mimic their accents," Verma said. "In our case, we are analyzing speech." But many call center companies in India said the new technology could prove to be a supplement rather than a substitute to existing training programs. "Online solutions and software can act as an aid in training an individual. However, it is critical that this is supported by classroom training," said Pradeep Narayanan, chief delivery officer at 24/7 Customer, a leading Indian outsourcing company. Narayanan said his company already uses software to help employees to improve fluency and clarity of speech as well as undertake self-evaluations of their language skills. "Such tools can be amalgamated as new modules into existing training programs. They can never be a standalone solution," said Asutosh Malik, vice president training at EXL Services, a New York-based outsourcing company that employs more than 7,000 people at call centers in India. EXL encourages its employees to speak English in an accent-neutral style and uses a mixture of tools that include e-learning, accent samples and records of conversations with clients. But the emphasis is "on learning through practice," Malik said. Scores of Western firms routinely transfer back-office work to India, where wages are low and skilled workers are plentiful. When the outsourcing boom got underway in the late 1990s, companies tried to ease Western fears of jobs moving offshore by training workers to use American and British accents. Many of them often used fake western names. However, with resentment in the West waning, most companies are now discouraging their employees from faking accents or names. Instead, they are being asked to speak clearly and avoid accents. IBM's solution could help these efforts, but it isn't clear if the company would commercialize the new technology. EXL's Malik said IBM's tool could find a good market in India. The need to develop the new technology was driven, in part, by IBM's own plans to expand and hire more people in India. Over the next three years, it plans to invest $6 billion in India, making it a hub for its outsourcing business. It plans to hire more employees for all of its businesses, including Daksh eServices, an Indian call center company that employs more than 25,000 people and was acquired by IBM in 2004. "English has become the common language of the business world, so the ability to communicate effectively in English can dictate success or failure in integrating into the global business environment," said Dan Dias, director of India Research Lab. ---------------------------------------------- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by Jambo MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. --------------------------------------------- "easy access to the world"
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Eric Osiakwan