Education Ministry signs partnership with Huawei to equip TVET students with digital skills

The Ministry of Education has signed a partnership deal with Huawei aimed at equipping youths in TVET institutions with digital skills.

The three-year deal will see Huawei set up their centres of excellence in 150 TVETs across the country.

Principal Secretary Esther Muoria said through the partnership, the government aims to train about 1,000 students annually who will then be certified by Huawei.

Dr Muoria said the ministry will leverage national polytechnics to implement the partnership as they attract the largest number of students.

“In line with this partnership, Huawei will collaborate with the Kenya School of TVET to train 150 TOTs who will be equally distributed in these centres,” she said, adding that this will place the country in a better place as it eyes the digital economy.

“The question of industry complaining about skills mismatch is a thing we want to put in the past. One of our aims, unequivocally, is to make sure that the young people we are training are so well trained. We want to convince industry that we are here to bridge that gap,” she said.

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 “This is the ICT space that we want these young people to be in, so that by the time they finish, we make sure they have both the skill and the culture of that industry. You know, industries are different and they have different cultures. We want them to be there as much as possible, so that they also are cultured into working in that space. So we are not only addressing the skills gap, but we are also addressing the cultural gap.”

Huawei ICT Academy Manager Micheal Kamau said the MoU highlights the need for digital talent to work in the growing digital economy.

“The biggest bottleneck to the ICT industry is talent that is why we have this special collaboration and MOU with the Ministry of Education to work together to build more ICT talent to work in the digital economy,” said Mr Kamau.

He noted that when the ICT Academy in Kenya was established in 2018, the University of Nairobi was the only institution of partnership before it was later spread to 60 others.

“Currently, we work with only 10 national polytechnics, but through this MOU, we will expand this partnership to 150 TVETS who will become ICT Academy partners to benefit from the wealth of resources that Huawei has to offer, to benefit from teacher and student training and certification in digital skills,” said Kamau.

Kamau said the partnership has identified eight key domains that are in demand in the ICT industry.

“We look at the infrastructure, and how it's going in the Kenyan market. We have a lot of requirements on AI, that is a globally required skill. We also have a lot of requirements on network infrastructure, and with it comes cybersecurity because the country is becoming more and more connected,” he said, adding that, “So with these connections of people and of ICT infrastructure, we need young people who can also secure this equipment that the government and other technology companies are setting up.”

He said cybersecurity, cloud and cloud technologies is another area of focus as government services, and local businesses are going to have their processes running on the cloud.

“Another area we are going to focus on is big data, and also data mining and data protection. So we have services such as the BPO, which require young people who have the requisite skills in data management and such kind of services,” he said.

Kamau added, “We are also going to be focusing on big data as a potential skill area. All these skill areas are covered in our Huawei certification portfolio, that has 23 technical fields.”

He said each ICT academy that will receive a platform or a talent portal where they will be able to track the student learning progress, enrolment, teacher capability and their certification.

The Huawei ICT Academy explained that while the ministry will identify and onboard the participating institutions, Huawei comes into the curricula with a certificate in the advanced skills.

He said all students are eligible to enroll for the programme irrespective of the course they are taking.

“ICT cuts across, you could have a professional working in retail or e-commerce. However, the need for digital skills cuts across whatever sector you are in. So we want to come in as Huawei and support this,” he said.

Kamau said some of the students who will excel in the partnership will secure direct employment either at Huawei or some of their partners.