[kictanet] Kenya's Silicon Savannah & the Need to do more (Evans Ikua)

Wed Feb 25 20:00:07 EAT 2015

The story of TVET colleges is yet another sad chapter in our education
system. All major polytechnics have become universities. That is the reason
why we are seeing dubious colleges springing up to satisfy the demand for
training.
Having said that, if you take a close look at what the middle level
colleges are focusing on especially in IT will realize that we have a long
way to go.

If we spent a fraction of the money that we plan to sink into Konza city on
meaningful training and advanced skills development, then the returns would
be much greater over time. For us to earn significantly from outsourcing,
all we need is skills. Plenty of them. Skills that cannot be found anywhere
else on a given price.
Being a knowledge economy is not about everybody having access to cheap
bandwidth, spending their time on questionable content. It's about earning
a major fraction of our GDP from intellectual products and services,
including technology. It's about exporting our skills and creativity to the
outside world. That's what the top economies in the world are all about.

Evans
On Feb 25, 2015 6:37 PM, "Matunda Nyanchama via kictanet" <
kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

> Evans,
>
> You are right on the money.
>
> A colleague has recently remarked that the process for introducing new
> courses or changing existing ones at many of our universities is very
> arduous and discouraging. Some just choose to give us.
>
> As well, we should seriously consider how we deliver university education
> in the country. Many colleagues I meet hardly have time for research while
> largely focused on lectures and marking. The large class sizes don't help.
> .... UASU has in the past raised this and asked for more
> tutorial/assistantship support  so that lecturers focus more on course
> design/changes, course material & testing preparation, course quality
> assurance (design, testing/grading/etc.) and research while tutorial
> fellows/assistants would help with the grunt work: tutorials in small
> groups and marking.
>
> And how about the "missing middle"? Mid-level colleges (polytechnics,
> etc.) that deal with deep hands on training! (Of course not the Nairobi
> Aviation types).
>
> Baadaye.
>
> From: Evans Ikua <ikua.evans at gmail.com>
> To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
> Cc: Security List <security at lists.my.co.ke>
> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya's Silicon Savannah & the Need to do more
> Message-ID:
>     <CAJ5wL0_V2FyFPs-GMKKWw8hMzH1yikVB9aqm3PiCktgoSfybMw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> "The bad news is that higher learning in Kenya appears to be more of the
> business of education than the quality of the programmes and relevance to
> the market. There is a disconnect between what we are teaching and the
> needs of local industry, such that universities stand accused of a failure
> to proactively tune their programmes to market needs. The term ?yellow
> notes? has been mentioned in relation to use of the same material from year
> to year by some lecturers and professors, caring less for the dynamic
> nature of knowledge.
>
> ICT education and knowledge is a fast-paced affair. Knowledge and its
> packaging evolves rapidly, as do the delivery modes. Academic institutions
> must keep up with these changes if their graduates, especially in ICT ? a
> key pillar to the President?s Digital Promise - have to find relevance in
> the market."
>
> I totally agree with you there. The way it works in our Universities is
> that if teaching word processing pays and is easy to do, then that's what
> they teach. They are under financial pressure but that is no excuse. If
> they were to invest more in research, then they would come up with more
> interesting things to teach, and these topics would then match with the
> Industry demands. Otherwise we will never hear the last of the half-baked
> graduate story. This is not easy to do, but it pays in the long run. But
> how far can we see?
>
> What we need to ask ourselves is this; what do the best Universities in the
> world do that we don't? Why is everybody dying to go to MIT and Harvard?
> When you look at the fees that these Universities charge, it shows that
> they have enough money to invest in research, and the people who pay that
> money can see the value that they get. For us, it's a vicious cycle of
> mediocrity. If we continue teaching word processing in our Universities, we
> will never produce the next Google or Facebook. The greatest IT companies
> today came out University halls. What have our Universities produced
> lately? From what I see, we are producing people who are very skilled in
> implementing and supporting other people's technologies, and we are even
> struggling with that!
>
> Evans
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Matunda Nyanchama, PhD, CISSP; mnyanchama at aganoconsulting.com
> Agano Consulting Inc.;  www.aganoconsulting.com; Twitter: nmatunda;
> <http://twitter.com/#%21/nmatunda>Skype: okiambe
>
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