The education sector is expected to go a notch higher as the government reportedly plans to expand the Digital Literacy Programme (DLP) to cover secondary schools, tertiary institutions and the universities.
Through an official statement, “the move is aimed at turning Kenya into a world capital of Information Communication business outsourcing”.
The ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru said after the successful implementation of the current DLP programme in public Primary Schools, the government will move to other learning and training institutions to equip students and expose students to IT Skills.
Speaking at the Kenya School of Government on Monday 5fth when he officially launched a one-week induction course for 400 graduates under the DLP, Mr Mucheru said the government has also intensified efforts to expand broadband connectivity, build ICT human capacity and facilitate access to information and services to attract investment and capital in the ICT market.
Mucheru said “the government was partnering with the private sector to identify and mentor young talents, aimed at creating a rich pool of ICT human capital that will power the country’s flagship projects and strategically place Kenya in the global ICT stage”.
“The global ICT business outsourcing is a lucrative area that currently sttands at $300 billion (Ksh30,000 billion) while online jobs was valued at $2.5 billion,” The CS said.
According to Mucheru, the government is keenly monitoring ICT revolutionary innovations and making deliberate efforts to leverage on local skills to transfer half of the outsourcing and on-line jobs to Kenya over the next ten years.
Mr Mucheru urged Kenyans to take up online jobs, noting that already, over 41, 000 Kenyans were employed under digital online jobs. He said efforts were being made to connect most Kenyan homes to the internet, to provide opportunity to Kenyans to access free-lance on-line labor markets where they can work from home for companies abroad.
The Cabinet Secretary said the mobile phone market in Africa has huge potential, noting that the continent had 700 million phone subscribers out of which 37 million were Kenyans.
With over 40 million Kenyans holding mobile phones, the country’s import demand is projected to be 40 million phones every two years.
Mucheru added that the government was making deliberate effort to provide the information to the public for use, taking advantage of the current cloud computing system where data processing, storage and connectivity were unlimited.