ICT firms to help students get jobs

Fresh graduates stand to benefit from Techno Brain, Microsoft, Cisco and IBM’s three-month training programme, which will also link them to employers.

The programme, managed by Techno Brain under its Africa First initiative, is targeting 1,500 graduates from local universities and middle-level colleges.

“This is a programme we have designed with Africa’s unemployment problem in mind. The selected group will be trained in soft skills and basic ICT skills, and then be linked to our network of employers, mainly in small and medium enterprises,” said Aajay Alva, the director for education strategic alliances at Techno Brain.

Labour market

Today, unemployment in Kenya stands at 40 per cent, with 70 per cent of those without jobs aged between 15 and 35.

Further, the World Bank estimates that approximately 800,000 Kenyans join the labour market each year, but only 50,000 succeed in getting professional jobs.

Mr Alva said tackling the unemployment problem requires employees to work with educational institutions to help students keep up with the changing requirements in the job market, particularly in key sectors of the economy like ICT.

“Our institutions need to build links with the industry to know what is new and required by employers; curricula need to be industry driven,” he said.