advertisement
Wrap-Up: Our pick of main stories, Wednesday March 25th, 2015
Kenya moves passports’ application to e-Citizen portal from April… Kenya comes in 2nd with most startups selected for the Tony…
Kenya moves passports’ application to e-Citizen portal from April… Kenya comes in 2nd with most startups selected for the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP)… BrighterMonday revamps its online portal to inspire job seekers…and much more
Kenya moves passports’ application to e-Citizen portal from April
From next month, Kenyan Citizens applying for their passports will be required to apply for the document through the e-Citizen portal. The important announcement was posted by the Immigration Department on its twitter handle @ImmigrationDept that read, “As from Next month, we will ONLY accept online passport applications, using e-citizen.”
advertisement
PDTP partners aim to exceed President’s interns target in 2016
Partners of the recently launched Presidential Digital Talent Program (PDTP) have set a target to accept 500 interns for next year’s leg of the program, 300 more than the President’s initial target of 200. Speaking the #CIODay forum organised by IBM and CIO East East Africa, Robert Mugo, Director of Shared Services at the ICT Authority said: “The president said 200 interns but the target is 500 interns for next year.”
Mugo added that the Presidential Digital Talent Program is important to the Kenyan economy as it is aimed at providing manpower to both the public and private sectors and at the same time the program seeks to provide employment to the youth.
advertisement
Kenya comes in 2nd with most startups selected for the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP)
Kenya has come in the second place with the most start-ups selected for the first 1,000 African entrepreneurs for the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP). Over ten start-ups selected in Kenya were ICT start-ups.
TEEP is a US $100 million initiative to discover and support 10,000 African entrepreneurs over the next decade, with a target of creating one million new jobs and $10 billion in additional revenues in the process.
advertisement
BrighterMonday revamps its online portal to inspire job seekers
Every day, over 10,000 Kenyans log in to BrighterMonday’s portal in search of a job opportunity. This number has been growing especially as higher university intakes lead to more graduates. To keep up with the growing numbers of job seekers, the firm has revamped its portal adding more features for both job seekers and employers.
The Kenya Economic Report 2013 says Kenya is characterized by high rates of unemployment among the youth, coupled with similarly high rates of underemployment and informal employment in the same demographic. Employment rate among those aged 15 to 24 years stood at only 48.6 percent, but this rose to 62.7 percent for those in the 15 to 35 age group.
Liquid Telecom spends Kshs 36.4 million to lay fibre in Kenya’s Kilifi County
Liquid Telecom is investing $400,000 (Kshs 36.4 million) in Internet infrastructure that will see Kilifi County in Kenya opened up for interconnectivity for businesses and the county government premises. This is part of the firm’s US $50m investment in partnerships with counties that has so far seen 39 of Kenya’s 47 counties benefit from data connectivity.
The move will see 11 ministries in Kilifi connected on a 10-kilometre Wide Area Network (WAN) via fibre optics, two other ministries connected via microwave and four remote sites connected on very small aperture terminal (VSAT). Kilifi will thus enjoy first-in-class Internet connection as well as reliable and affordable access to the Internet necessary for the delivery of services to the public, including a revenue collection system that the county plans to upgrade. In addition, the county’s prominence as a tourism hub is expected to attract investment by entities that view fibre connectivity as a major enabler of business.