Scaling up learning for employability: Are we doing enough?

On a warm May morning, Pius, a graduate of Kenyatta University in Molecular Biology, prepares nervously for his interview with one of the most valuable company and largest software organization in the world.  While he earned his degree in Molecular Biology, opportunities to do real scientific work beyond routine essays and rote testing have been unforthcoming.

The famous American poet, writer and polemicist George Bernard Shaw wrote that “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Being a reasonable student, Pius added coding to his skills set and landed a few coding gigs through his friends. While the poets thinking is aptly captured in Pius’ case, the absence of opportunities for Pius to practice skills learnt at school reflects the reality of most STEM students.

Describing the success of East Asian economies, Joe Studwell in his book, ‘How Asia Works’ wrote that critical learning in the most successful developing countries takes place outside the formal education. It occurs, instead, inside firms which means that a dichotomy of sorts exists beyond the flashy University graduation garland.  While the relevance and the importance of a university education is not in doubt, industry practice, the next critical step after graduation has been massively neglected.

The scenario gets darker for generations of students who graduated in Mathematics, Computer Science, Biology, Pharmacy, Engineering, Chemistry and even Medicine. Science-based industries have not risen-up sufficiently to provide internship opportunities. In fact, the current trend involves funnelling our brilliantly amplified talents into other fields. Not that there is anything wrong with these jobs, but it’s the antithesis of the handoff between academia and industry. The transition from learning by learning, to learning by doing.

While the situation persists, the ramifications are eating into our chances for economic growth. In the Kenyan car market for example, imported Japanese brands are sold in every car yard. The stark truth, however, is that beyond the importation, associated servicing and spares industry, little else happens to directly increase the deep skilling or GDP of the country, yet there lies massive potential in local manufacturing and assembling industries. The reasons are complex and this in in no way represents a wholehearted unwillingness for stakeholders to act, but it’s evident that there is not enough effort being channelled towards rectifying the situation.

One could argue that a lot of the now developed countries went through this sort of phase. In the early to mid-1800s, German engineering was poor, and nothing compared to the then mighty Japan. In addition, India’s tech industry was known to be woefully inadequate in the 80’s. Today, the two countries boast of booming economies massively driven by superior technologies, supervised by a rich pool of well-seasoned engineers.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in his book Hit Refresh says this “… [Kenya] It’s a nation with great promise, one that with digital transformation could leapfrog over others by getting infrastructure and skills in place…”. Although at a slow pace, Kenya has started her journey of transformation. Through organizations such as Microsoft’s Africa Development Centre who are making a bet on the countries including Kenya and Nigeria to hub their engineering effort, management and thought paradigm by stakeholders is set to bring the country a generational step change.

While at it, we must bear in mind Studwell’s thinking on  what created the Canons, the Samsungs, the Huaweis, the Acers and so on in Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan was the marriage of infant industry protection and market forces, involving subsidized exports and competition between manufacturers that vied for state support. This might prove difficult given that various treaties now signed by Kenya on trade, imagine a scenario where it was incumbent upon consumer organizations and government to seek tech services from organizations that hub their development and engineering efforts in Kenya? Wouldn’t this be an expanded field of opportunities for graduating students?

While technology is dubbed the growth engine of the next generation, a wider field to practice what is learnt will go a long way to make the engine run more efficiently which takes us back to the statement “Learning by doing”. This would indeed transform the country to unimaginable heights of quality engineering.

Employing an inclusive approach to investing in foundational skills means simultaneously addressing the unavailability of opportunities for on job training by young graduates.  5 years from now, Imagine the engineering talent that will be churned out of spaces such as Microsoft’s Development Centre!

Jack Ngare is the Managing Director at Microsoft ADC