'Disrespected' jobs not at risk of invasion by artificial intelligence

AI is reshaping employment.[File, Standard]

Anxiety is slowly spreading across universities and in corporate offices in Kenya. It is the anxiety of people who have built their lives around academic qualifications and are only now beginning to wonder whether artificial intelligence (AI) has invalidated their investment. 

They include the lawyer who spent four years at the university. The radiologist who sacrificed years mastering the art of reading scans. The software developer who coded through sleepless nights to land a job that an AI tool can now approximate in seconds. For these people, the future is bleak. 

AI is eating through the so-called prestige professions with a thoroughness that should alarm any government serious about creating employment for graduates. Legal research, which once kept armies of junior associates busy, is now handled faster and cheaper by AI tools. 

Medical diagnosis, financial analysis, content writing, customer service, translation, data entry; entire industries that absorbed university graduates are being restructured around fewer human beings. For a country like Kenya, where the economy cannot absorb the number of graduates it produces every year, this is an emergency. 

Luckily, there are things AI cannot do. It cannot unblock your drainage system. It cannot rewire a faulty electrical board. It cannot replace a cracked engine gasket, reconstruct a roof truss, or lay ceramic tiles. No algorithm can reach through a screen and solder a joint. That’s work for the plumber, the electrician, the carpenter, the welder, and the auto mechanic. 

These professionals who operate in the physical world using their hands, their tools, and their accumulated practical judgment, are spared AI interruptions. The trades, long dismissed in Kenya as the refuge of those who could not pass their KCSE exams with sufficient distinction, are slowly emerging as some of the most AI-proof occupations.

This is a challenge Kenya must face. For decades, the government and society have treated Technical and Vocational Education and Training institutions as second-class establishments; underfunded, understaffed, poorly equipped, and socially stigmatised.

A student who scored a C and ended up at a TVET college was understood to have fallen short. The student who scored an A and proceeded to study medicine or law was understood to have succeeded. AI is dismantling that hierarchy with alarming efficiency, yet the government is still not paying much attention.

Tvet colleges are running workshops with machinery that belongs in a museum. Students learning automotive engineering are working on engines from a previous generation of vehicles. Electrical installation classes are taught with equipment that predates modern wiring standards. 

If the government is serious about positioning TVET graduates for a labour market that AI is reshaping, it must fund these institutions with the same seriousness it funds universities. That means modern equipment, industry-aligned curricula, and instructors who have actually worked in the trades they teach rather than merely studied them academically.

Beyond equipment, the government should dismantle the social stigma that drives capable young Kenyans away from vocational training. This requires deliberate messaging from the highest levels of leadership, but it also requires structural reform. 

Tvet graduates should have clearly defined pathways into entrepreneurship, formal employment, and further education. A master electrician should be able to earn and accumulate professional credentials that society recognises and rewards. Without this, even the best-equipped Tvet college will struggle to attract students who believe their future depends on a university degree.

Kenya also needs to rethink which parts of its economy it wants to protect from AI displacement and which it is content to surrender. Rushing to integrate AI into every sector without a parallel strategy for the workers it displaces is executive negligence.