- Access to digital skills needs to be upped.
- Different organizations and initiatives are focused on imparting the youth with the essential digital knowledge.
- TechLit Africa on top of organizations transforming lives through digital literacy.
Citizen development in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is one of the strategies to enhance digital literacy.
Citizen developers create software and applications with little or no coding experience and will be central to digital transformation in the future.
Suppose we continue to ignore the fact that technological progress and its accelerating rate of change require new skill sets. In that case, we will produce a workforce unfit for the 230 million jobs requiring digital skills by 2030, according to IFC 2019 Digital Skills report.
Digital skills
Nelly Cheboi, from Mogotio in Baringo county, is one great example of a student who excelled and proved that the power of digital skills is powerful and is the way to future successful millionaires.
Through her non-profit organization Technologically Literate Africa, commonly known as TechLit Africa, she has cleared her path on what she needs to impact many illiterate lives through recycled computers to create technology labs in schools in rural Kenya.
At one point in her college education, coding was one of the interviews she worked hard for, a skill that is now crucial and included in the TechLit curriculum.
With ten schools that she is serving, her exposure and limelight will expose her to even more.
Her dream is to see the first TechLit kids graduate high school and get online jobs through coding skills.
“From the classroom to career stage, digital literacy will help Kenyan youth stay ahead,” says George Asamani, Managing Director of sub-Saharan Africa at Project Management Institute (PMI).
The success of mobile money and the rise of African techpreneurs has catalyzed the technology investment scene on the continent.
Promoting digital access
At the recent US-Africa Business Forum, President Joe Biden announced the Digital Transformation with Africa (DTA) initiative, which will invest $350 million to expand digital access and literacy in Africa.
During the last decade, the promise of Africa’s $180 billion digital economy started an undersea cable race amongst Silicon Valley giants to build the region’s internet infrastructure.
Africa controls 70% of the world’s $1 trillion mobile money market.
This fact can easily lull you into believing the continent is a land of digital abundance.
Being Pollyanna about the explosive growth in mobile payments masks the full magnitude of the digital divide.
For instance, compared to other regions in the world, sub-Saharan Africa still has the highest monthly cost of one gigabyte of data as a percentage of GDP.
In Baringo
In Baringo County in Kenya, Elias ICT center, a computer-learning institution established in 2013 in partnership with World Best Friends-Korea and the county government of Baringo, trains residents from across the county on ICT courses free of charge, with four intakes each year.
In 2022 during one of the graduation ceremonies, the ICT Director of Baringo county, Gideon Tirok, confirmed that the center had equipped 7,000 graduates since its inception.
Tirok is hopeful that by 2023 the intake will have increased and make Baringo a Techno Savvy society.
Baringo county governor Benjamin Cheboi called upon the residents to take advantage of the free ICT training at Elias ICT to acquire skills that will benefit their future endeavors.
According to the 2021 Ibrahim Forum Report, 58% of Kenyans have access to the internet, but only 29% of the population has a basic level of digital literacy.
The lack of digital literacy hinders the country’s economic growth and results in missed opportunities.
Digital literacy is more than just the ability to use the internet; it is also about skills in data analytics, app development, and network management.
Digital support
While there are initiatives through different organizations to have digital education instilled in our kids, different secondary schools have incorporated computer lessons to ensure the success of digital literacy initiatives.
Parents and guardians are also looking for educational institutions with computer literacy education in their programs.
These programs’ benefits are interlinked, aiming to reach the youth directly and indirectly.
This is through improving youth employment chances, support for job creation and offering skills that respond to the problems of obtaining information through the labor market information System (LMIS) and Strengthening Youth Policy Development and Project Management.
Coding in schools
The Kenyan government has taken a step in the right direction by introducing coding as part of the school curriculum in primary and secondary schools.
This will improve young people’s digital literacy and equip them with the necessary skills to compete in the digital economy.
According to McKinsey, in prioritizing digital literacy, policymakers can hope to attract some of the 20-50 million jobs created from technology development and deployment.
Role of policymakers
While curriculums in many African schools address computer literacy, policymakers should ensure that the curriculum develops digital literacy skills that are relevant to the country’s digital economy.
This will ensure that students have the necessary skills to take up the opportunities provided by Kenya’s growing digital economy.
Baringo High School, a National School in Koibatek sub-county and the best-performing school in the county has had a success story since the inception of computer lessons in its curriculum.
Important basic skills
Though the lessons offered are basic, in form four, there are aspects of coding skills students come across.
The skills have already created employment for some of the alumni, with some keeping themselves busy using the basic skills as they await their university entry.
This is just an example of how basic skills can expose someone to employment.
What about when such a person goes deeper to acquire more skills?
This is exactly what Nelly Cheboi is focusing on achieving through her TechLit organization. It is proof enough that it is doable.
Digital literacy initiatives
Various private sector organizations, such as mobile network operators and technology companies, have launched digital literacy initiatives in Kenya.
For example, Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile network operator, has established a program called “DigiFarm,” which provides small-scale farmers with digital skills to improve their productivity and income through information.
That said, more needs to be done to bridge the broader digital literacy gap, especially in rural Kenya, to ensure that all Kenyans can participate in the digital economy.
Not-for-profit Project Management Institute, the world’s leading association for project professionals, has been advocating to make it easier for students to connect with skills development opportunities over the internet.
It offers citizen development courses free of cost to interested universities in Africa.
But coordinating mechanisms are needed to improve interaction and collaboration across government, educational institutes, training providers, and businesses so the intention is translated into action.
As we face the fourth industrial revolution, improving access at the expense of the ability to participate in the digital economy is squandering the best opportunity in decades to close the digital divide.
While all this information is crucial, it goes without saying that digital literacy impacts economic development by driving its growth gradually.
These are only the initiatives brought forth that are embraced to bring Kenya’s ICT sector to its desired heights.
In Baringo County, Rift Innovation Centre at Mwachon offers courses on Digital marketing and programming courses that include coding, with other units including artificial intelligence.
This is at a fee as much as initially its existence was meant to offer affordable courses for many to acquire basic digital skills.
Though Eldama Ravine Town in Koibatek sub-county has a section offering free Wi-Fi, it does not really answer the need that is there— to make these users digitally literate—more than just accessing social media platforms and following up on the current news to keep up to date.
Way forward
More is needed to ensure that the accessibility to such Wi-Fi is accompanied by new training on how to use it through digital businesses, exploration, and exposure.
YOU CAN ALSO READ: How government’s digital literacy training is transforming youths’ lives
Though there is a notably increasing number of Kenyan youth using social media to make money, some have these skills through their aggressiveness to learn how to operate some software to their benefit. In contrast, some have acquired skills from schools.
