the skills are available, maybe just not at the volume and price the googles and microsoft and the other tech giants require

ati unlocking a phone is a Cryptography skill

i did not expressly show Cryptography just linked it to the general subject ..but heehehehe i do not want a dickfest of how lonng your schlong is at discerning Cryptography boss tusiende apo

Not all IT related outsourcing is specialized (think IT support) and those that are don't need decades to develop eg application development (we don't have to go into manufacturing chipsets), also entry barrier to this industry is not high compared to let say manufacturing. I believe Kenya will become a major player in the outsourcing industry if current efforts by MoIC succeed. Bitange seem to have the vision right and I am hopeful about the future.

@ChessMaster, i'm surprised that you don't realize that anything Mzungu sells in Kenya. The same guys with the same skillset will definitely be on a higher jobgrade than you are. A case in time is the KDN issue where locals were kicked out in favour of "expatriates". The company is almost being sold as we speak. Read the papers.

Macharia (founder of Seven Seas Technologies)was aired on NTV some time back. He says getting contracts in Kenya is so prohibitive that it favours foreign companies. The guy is actually implementing solutions in Nigeria, and yet struggles to get contracts in the country. And when a contract is awarded to a foreign firm, he ends up losing his employees to the same firm to implement or gets approached to implement for a fraction of the contract amount.

This is the sad story of affairs

@Wa P, The reason is because such companies are not looking for specialists but jacks of all trade. In such cases, you find a job advert looking for a software developer but also throws in something like CCNA, MCSE etc is added advantage. What crap is that? You get exactly what you ask for.


I had already mentioned a few software products ie Mpesa, pesa-pal, ushahidi.



Check out Craft Silicon and you will realise that he is implementing financial solutions in the above mentioned countries.Craft Silicon is Kenyan, so is seven Seas Technologies



I agree. But even without the proper curriculum, see how far we have come. Ndio sababu hatuombi serikali



The above definitely requires some skill, but not the kind of skills we are discussing.



You mean like mpesa application. It is kenyan you know, but patented by some ....Just kidding

Think beyond the "tunaomba serikal" approach.

Basically I agree with what others have raised here that there is significant lack of quality highly skilled labor. That high quality skilled labor will not appear magically, neither are the current single handed efforts going to be sustainable long-term as those young developers will start looking for more income stability as they mature.

Typically, it may take even 15-20 years to educate a true expert (at about age 35). Expertise is somewhat a generational thing -skills are improved over generations of experts that is why you have global clusters of certain skills. Therefore, if you look at the broader picture, government's commitment to educate people is a must have, we need to get our human capital generating machine working -that is the key driver.

As for those who are pointing at research centers as the hall marks of growth, well, I don't know what they understand by research. Simply, a large part of research is about fact finding and taking ques that can be used for future products features. It's really about data gathering and trying to understand the context of future applications (products or services). What ever those research centers will stumble upon during their research, it is quickly bundled for production abroad somewhere where there is talent that can refine the idea.

If any company brought an R&D center to Kenya, then that would be another story.

Which then leads to another question, why are they not able to produce their own IP or what hinders them from having their own IP?