Human Resource for ICT 2011, a two and a half day conference organized by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization in partnership with the Communications Comission of Kenya (CCK) has kicked off this week. The event, currently happening at the Hilton hotel, has attracted attendants from 24 Commonwealth countries including Jamaica, Trinidad and Papua New Guinea.

Opening the conference, Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary in Kenya’s Ministry of Communication says that with most Commonwealth countries need to stop depending on foreign aid, having attained independence more than 50 years ago. Ndemo says one of the keys to independence is better collection of revenue through automation of revenue collection.

The PS, who is representing Samuel Poghisio, Kenya’s Minister for Communication, also advocates for higher enrollment of college students in Science related courses in comparison to Arts and Business related ones.
In his speech, the Minister addresses pertinent issued related to the overall theme of business continuity plans. He says that Africa is a disaster prone continent making business continuity a critical topic on the continent. “In Africa, the penetration if ICT industry has grown beyond initial projections to become an integral part of all aspects of our life, including politics, economic activities and social interactions”. Some of the initiatives the Government is taking to mitigate the impact of disasters on ICT infrastructure include a National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).
The National CERT will work together with a National Disaster Operation Centre, the private sector and civil societies to handle sophisticated cyber crimes amongst other tasks. “The Government has also developed a draft National Policy on Disaster Management in Kenya. The policy emphasizes on preparedness in Government, communities and other stakeholders in Disaster Risk Reduction activities. The policy is currently under discussion at high levels of Government and shall be gazetted soon,” he says, adding that Kenya’s backbone infrastructure enjoys a high level of redundancy, attained due to high competition in the telecoms sector. Other measures the government has worked on include an ICT curriculum for all levels of education, primary to university which the minister’s speech said would be implemented soon.
Also speaking at the event, Charles Njoroge, Director General of CCK said that ICT growth had outpaced the supply of qualified ICT personnel. This he said, has been brought about by liberation of markets in most commonwealth countries which had in turn created “multi-operator ICT environments that thrived on innovation, prompting cut-throat competition for the limited pool if high skilled ICT experts and high staff turnover. The situation is made worse by fast changes in technology, which renders the experts of today almost irrelevant tomorrow.”
The CCK Director General said that turnover of highly skilled staff impacted the performance of an ICT firm as this may result in duplication of innovations by competitors. “Companies spent substantial amounts of money to recruit and develop highly skilled experts only to lose them to the competition,” he says.
Juma Kandie, Director of Human Resources and Administration at the CCK lauded the Programme for Development and Training, (PDT). “The programme (PDT) is maintained by the CTO, and each year, over 1000 telecom engineers and other ICT professionals receive bespoke training directly relevant to their role.” Kandie also announced that the PDT management committee would be meeting later in the week to approve funding for “a range of new expertise assistance programmes for the next 12 months.” Kandie said that the decision had come after a 2 month detailed review of requirements expressed by PDT members.