Incubation programme targets ICT students

Seven Seas Technologies has developed a programme that helps transfer practical ICT skills to students while they are still in colleges, writes STANDARD REPORTER

Rapid changes in technology have seen fresh ICT graduates faced with performance challenges in the job market.

Employers are often forced to retrain ICT professionals, especially fresh graduates to match market demands.

As a result, there is growing consensus that universities and other training institutions update ICT curricular to remain relevant in today’s competitive and hyper dynamic ICT sector.

According to Patrick Kariithi, a fourth-year Information Science student at Moi University, Kenyan universities need to close the gap between Information Communication Technology (ICT) skills developed in the institutions and the specific skills and competencies demanded by the industry.

Kariithi says training institutions risk churning out ‘irrelevant’ graduates who are out of tune with the realities in the job market.

"School of Information Sciences (SIS) at Moi University has, for instance, developed a culture of holding annual information conferences which convenes ICT stakeholders to dissect and explore the most current technologies that learners must contend with," says Kariithi, also the SIS student representative.

He says the school also holds regular career talks and ‘information week forum’ facilitated by SIS student leadership.

Unfortunately, this has not been the case in most ICT training colleges — forcing many companies to spend a fortune to retrain fresh IT graduates to fit the job demand.

It is this reality that has seen Seven Seas Technologies coin a plan of transferring knowledge to students while they are still in colleges. When they graduate, they are ripe for work without further expensive training.

In the programme dubbed ‘Knowledge For Life’ (K4life), already 60 students have been exposed to skills that are rare to find in the normal university curricula.

According to Ms Betty Macharia, programme manager, Knowledge For Life, the selected students attend lessons at the company’s training centre in Nairobi on weekends.

Eric Chege, a University of Nairobi graduate and a beneficiary of the Seven Seas incubation programme says the initiative is aimed at bridging the skill gap between what is currently taught in university curricula and what is required in the technology industry.

Market standards

The programme lasts six weeks, during which the trainees are introduced to industry technologies, conventions and standards in a wide range of technology fields such as business applications, enterprise networks and intelligent real estate.

"I have gone through this programme and so far, it is probably the best career-wise decision I have ever made," says Chege.

"As a student at the University of Nairobi studying Computer Science, my skill set was purely academic and with no industry experience, I knew that getting a job would present a bit of a challenge," he said, sentiments his colleague, Mwema Kerich from Jomo Kenyatta university of Agriculture, echoed.

Kerich, a Computer Science student and due to graduate next month, says the Knowledge For Life programme opened him to what is happening in the industry.

"The programme has exposed me to things I never knew and has helped me make informed decisions about my career path," says Kerich.

"I have come to realise that some aspects of our universties’ ICT curriculum is outdated and irrelevant in the market."

"In my final semester at the University, K4life came calling and I signed up fast," Chege says.

Fast forward six weeks and my mind had been opened up to the plethora of opportunities in the industry. I had had the theoretical foundation setup in four years of university learning and through the initiative, I acquired actual working understanding of industry technologies, standards and practices," Chege sums up his experience.

Chege was subsequently employed by Seven Seas Technologies as a software engineer, and has continued to grow by working on various projects and attending a myriad of training courses.

At K4Life, trainees are exposed to internationally recognised training with certifications in areas like Networking, Security, voice, telephony and business applications.

During the training, students work closely with the experienced professionals and this helps in shortening the training. University of Nairobi and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology students have already benefited from the programme with Kenyatta University earmarked to benefit starting this month.