Kenya govt doesn’t care about ICT

Going by the number of “information technology colleges” in Kenya, we should be giving Silicon Valley a run for their megabucks. Maybe that’s too ambitious.

But is there a good reason we do not rank up there with India in ICT productivity and revenues per capita?

There is. We have become so lost in this IT-college boom, that we have failed to open our eyes to the dubious courses and facilities they offer.

Very few of these “colleges” are worth the trouble and money we pay to get enrolled.

There is virtually no government control or national curriculum for computing studies, right to the university level.

Interestingly, ICT has been touted as the plunk of the government’s new development strategy; there have even been a few mentions of it in one or more of the recent drafts constitutions.

Yet it (the government) is hoping the mess we find ourselves in will somehow sort itself out.

A key obstacle to regulating the sector is the network of dubious deals the government is enmeshed in.

Civil servants stand to lose a lot if records were computerised. Indeed, most civil service departments have adopted computers only for display purposes.

To no one’s surprise, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands, Dorothy Angote unearthed thousands of “lost” files when she raided the offices a few days ago.

It is obvious that adopting computer technology in such places would drastically reduce the corruption and patronage that prevails there.

But who is holding their breath awaiting such an adoption?

It is, therefore, no surprise that our ICT training is carried out in the absence of a collective national policy, without a curriculum or even national objective.

The sad thing is that ICT is key to development.

But in the absence of government interest, we will continue to receive haphazard training, for lack of a better term, which achieves little other than churn out half-baked graduates carrying worthless certificates.

Mr Wanyonyi is a telecoms project manager based in Saudi Arabia. E-mail pwanyonyi@gmail.com