[kictanet] Day 5 of 10- BPO Discussions, HR Issues

[bitange at jambo.co.ke]

Walubengo,
With respect to capacity building, the Government has done the following
Established Multimedia University to focus on IT Skills Development;
Contracted the Central Bureau of Statistics through CCK to conduct ICT
Skills inventory in Kenya and Set up a task force to look into Skills
development as recommended by MaKinsey in the just concluded Value
Proposition.  We are in the process of appointing other stakeholders into
the committee.

Although we do not have a sector strategy on Capacity building, the
Governemnt takes issues of skills development very seriously. This is a
matter that NESC emphasizes as key to our competitiveness.  In this regard
we look forward to a quick finalization of the skills inventory and the
task force recommendation.

Regards


Ndemo.



> -Day 5 of 10- BPO Discussions, Human Capacity Issues
>
> Morning all,
>
> I trust you had a refreshing weekend.  Today I want to introduce the theme
> on Human Resource Development for the BPO industry.  The Researchers found
> that India, S.Africa and Mauritius had a comprehensive inventory of their
> skill-base that was also available for Validation by prospective employers
> and investors.  Another observation was ofcourse the sheer numbers of
> Indian graduates (millions) that made it the largest base of highly
> skilled pool of graduates with strong mathematical/scientific orientation.
>  Whereas, Mauritius was producing only 10,000 (university) graduates per
> year compared to Kenya's 30,000 per year, Mauritius had the advantage of
> properly documenting their national graduates database and marketing it
> appropriately to potential clients in Europe/America.  In addition, the
> Researchers noted that Mauritius had a government funded but
> Private-Sector oriented ICT Academy that produced graduates specificially
> for the ICT industry.
>
> In Kenya, the Researchers observed that apart from the lack of a national
> database on the available skills/graduates, some of the BPO operators were
> engaged in vicious poaching cycles where Agents trained in-house by one
> Operater are immediately hired by the Competing Operators. It was noted,
> that an attempt has been made by the .KE Government to create an
> Industry-specific University (Multimedia University College of Kenya) to
> address the HR gap but its success or otherwise will remain to be seen in
> a few years time.  The Researchers also noted that Kenya's
> English-speaking labor force had an edge over the Indian one given that
> the average Kenyan had a "neutral" accent unlike the Indian graduate who
> tended to have an "ethnic" accent that often distracted the Euro-American
%3


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