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Future of IT in Kenya
Rank: Member Joined: 12/16/2008 Posts: 111
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wa P wrote: Anybody who has interviewed IT prospects knows the annoying refrain that 'Networking' has become. @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. wa P wrote:Can we list down the 'original, made in Kenya' IT end products that make commercial sense - that is, satisfying a need profitably? I had already mentioned a few software products ie Mpesa, pesa-pal, ushahidi. wa P wrote:
The IT integration projects in corporate Kenya is littered with 9ijas, Indians, Zimbabweans and most recently East Europeans. So much for hubs, Nokias and IBMs.
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 wa P wrote:
The IT body in Kenya need a lot more than hubs and 'tunaomba selikali'. Top amongst being; good IT curriculum with an optimum mix of technology and business skills (finance, economics), Global best and next practices and peer reviewed developments, Lesson 101 on internet (such an amazing resource/ platform that we misuse).
I agree. But even without the proper curriculum, see how far we have come. Ndio sababu hatuombi serikali wa P wrote:
Having a facebook account, transferring money by Mpesa and having a yahoo account does not pass as IT skills.
The above definitely requires some skill, but not the kind of skills we are discussing. wa P wrote:
Neither is building a simple website, developing an 'mobile App' that only makes sense to you or having a desk at an incubation room.
You mean like mpesa application. It is kenyan you know, but patented by some ....Just kidding
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Rank: Member Joined: 5/26/2009 Posts: 326 Location: Nairobi
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Tito44 wrote:ChessMaster wrote:But for arguements sake, if the skills are there why are there so many expatriates taking the jobs and why haven't the locals made use of these skills except for a few individuals and organizations? @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 Some if not most of those 'mzungu' things are quite good and kenyan businesses should want the best. They may have been there before us, but our collective challenge is to innovate ahead of them. Take for example Banker's Realm by Craft Silicone, a Kenyan firm (owned by a gentleman of Indian origin). It is only considered as an entry level system, and as a bank grows they go for more sophisticated systems. Does Seven Sea Technologies own IP for any robust, field standard application or solution?
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Rank: Member Joined: 6/27/2011 Posts: 301 Location: Nairobi
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wanyee wrote:eboomerang wrote:
If we are to create an industry, the government needs to get it right and it could take many years to form it. Right now we have young people with the right mindset and motivation but there is no environment and neither are they fully equipped.
i disagree the environment is there no need for "tunaomba serikali iingilie kati" cry no absolute need for that. The harsh tough environment is what nurtures innovation example use of limited locally available resources to surmount challenging problems ..that my friend is innovation and will be very competitive globally . IT the field of knowledge technologies such as AI and expert systems is the way to go. 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.
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Rank: Member Joined: 7/17/2011 Posts: 627 Location: Mbui-Nzau, Kikumbulyu
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wa P wrote:Tito44 wrote:ChessMaster wrote:But for arguements sake, if the skills are there why are there so many expatriates taking the jobs and why haven't the locals made use of these skills except for a few individuals and organizations? @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 Some if not most of those 'mzungu' things are quite good and kenyan businesses should want the best. They may have been there before us, but our collective challenge is to innovate ahead of them. Take for example Banker's Realm by Craft Silicone, a Kenyan firm (owned by a gentleman of Indian origin). It is only considered as an entry level system, and as a bank grows they go for more sophisticated systems. Does Seven Sea Technologies own IP for any robust, field standard application or solution? Not sure but i think they(SST) are largely infra-com less appdev..and likely do major conveyance for products and services of Major international firms. They are hardly R&D which mean less likehood of IP or copyrights
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Rank: Member Joined: 6/27/2011 Posts: 301 Location: Nairobi
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wanyee wrote:wa P wrote:Tito44 wrote:ChessMaster wrote:But for arguements sake, if the skills are there why are there so many expatriates taking the jobs and why haven't the locals made use of these skills except for a few individuals and organizations? @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 Some if not most of those 'mzungu' things are quite good and kenyan businesses should want the best. They may have been there before us, but our collective challenge is to innovate ahead of them. Take for example Banker's Realm by Craft Silicone, a Kenyan firm (owned by a gentleman of Indian origin). It is only considered as an entry level system, and as a bank grows they go for more sophisticated systems. Does Seven Sea Technologies own IP for any robust, field standard application or solution? Not sure but i think they are largely infra-com less appdev..and likely do major conveyance for products and services of Major international firms. They are hardly R&D which mean less likehood of IP or copyrights 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?
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Rank: Member Joined: 7/17/2011 Posts: 627 Location: Mbui-Nzau, Kikumbulyu
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eboomerang wrote:wanyee wrote:wa P wrote:Tito44 wrote:ChessMaster wrote:But for arguements sake, if the skills are there why are there so many expatriates taking the jobs and why haven't the locals made use of these skills except for a few individuals and organizations? @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 Some if not most of those 'mzungu' things are quite good and kenyan businesses should want the best. They may have been there before us, but our collective challenge is to innovate ahead of them. Take for example Banker's Realm by Craft Silicone, a Kenyan firm (owned by a gentleman of Indian origin). It is only considered as an entry level system, and as a bank grows they go for more sophisticated systems. Does Seven Sea Technologies own IP for any robust, field standard application or solution? Not sure but i think they are largely infra-com less appdev..and likely do major conveyance for products and services of Major international firms. They are hardly R&D which mean less likehood of IP or copyrights Which then leads to another question, why are they not able to produce their own IP? Research methodologies 101..motivation,lack of engagement with stakeholders(academia, end -users) most R&D in kenya is academic ..papers are published and gather dust in colleges hardly any applied R&D to real life local situations...*my 2 cents 
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Rank: New-farer Joined: 4/28/2011 Posts: 30
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I believe we are moving in the right direction. Let's not dismiss how far we have come.
The government comes in by providing cheap(er) and reliable power (all industries are crying out for this), creating and enforcing IT legislation dealing with computer crimes/fraud etc, piracy and Intellectual property, cable vandalism etc Without these basics we won't go much farther.
Like Tito said, most companies look for jack of all trades thus the It professionals are mostly forced to learn a bit of everything and never master in anything. I once worked with a team from India. They had a Windows OS guy, a Linux guy, a DB2 guy, a Oracle guy etc The Oracle guy had no clue in DB2 but in Oracle he was a master, and so on. skillwise bado hatujafika. Ya you may be an 'expert' VB programmer but at what skill level were the ones who created VB or php or photoshop or....?
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Rank: Elder Joined: 2/23/2009 Posts: 1,626
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I like where this arguement is going. In truth in IT you need to be a jack of all trades and a master of some core elements if your performance is going to be superior. You can't compare high-level programming languages with the likes of php in terms of the skills required to create such languages. I agree with eboomerang,expertise requires years of exposure and not only to the job you are good at. Uncertainty is certain.Let go
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Rank: Member Joined: 5/26/2009 Posts: 326 Location: Nairobi
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hairglo wrote:
Like Tito said, most companies look for jack of all trades thus the It professionals are mostly forced to learn a bit of everything and never master in anything. I once worked with a team from India. They had a Windows OS guy, a Linux guy, a DB2 guy, a Oracle guy etc The Oracle guy had no clue in DB2 but in Oracle he was a master, and so on. skillwise bado hatujafika. Ya you may be an 'expert' VB programmer but at what skill level were the ones who created VB or php or photoshop or....?
Companies that expect IT resource to be jack of all trades are usually led by IT-Illiterate managers. That genre is one of the biggest drawbacks in building skills and experience. A recent such got his laptop going off due to discharge and he growled to a technical analyst, 'why do we pay you if laptops are failing in this office?' 
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Rank: Member Joined: 11/10/2010 Posts: 281 Location: Nairobi
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The future of IT in Kenya is bright, bleak and unpredictable.
Not for lack of educated people but for lack of innovative people.
We have truck loads of CCNA, DBA, Developers etc, but we are not a silicon valley because we approach IT with a wrong attitude and those people or companies who make any inroads do so mainly by providing very basic services.
IT in Kenya is still in an infant stage where a small % of the population having appreciated the value of ICT are yet to fully adopt this technologies as their everyday tools of trade.
The biggest barriers are cost, reach ability, literacy and innovation.
Those that can in any way surpass those barriers have gone ahead to make some good money.
Eg: MPESA solves the reachability problem; people send money electronically without the need to use computers or access expensive networks. (Not sure if it's cheap though)
Schools: Make a killing solving the literacy problem (not sure how beneficial some are) but the number of youth and adults lining up in colleges to learn how to use computers is very encouraging
Computer shops selling refurbished and low cost clones also make a killing solving the cost problem for those who wish to own their own PC.
Mobile apps do fix the cost barrier as more people have access to phones than they do to computers, but even there we have practically zero innovation.
What we lack is innovative people who can take those ICT skills learnt to build profitable businesses. Right now practically most developers I know are either plain lazy Joomla clones or people who would rather go greenhouse farming in their free time than risk their time developing a prototype for a decent idea they have.
Instead of hawking software they have developed, the unemployed ones make a living off installing pirated software or selling flash disks.
None of this universities or colleges has produced a market worthy app in the several years they have been churning out graduates who spent hours working on a project, because, we are a me too country. Developing the same old school timetables, cafeteria systems, video library apps or some other crap VBA application.
Go there ask to throw money at a risk worthy app and you will be terribly disappointed at the low entrepreneurial spirit this places have.
We Just do not innovate!
We do not appreciate that Science is meant to make our lives either more interesting or easier and that people pay for that.
Can you take a risk ?
Can you solve one of those barriers or innovate ?
then the future of IT for you will be very bright for you.
I'm sorry for ranting.
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