Why Kenya economy needs more highly skilled workers

As I looked out at the 700 bright young faces parading before us to receive their certificates, I felt good about the future of the country.

Our Chief guest was assistant minister for Higher Education Kilemi Mwiria, and this was his opening punch: ‘Higher education is as basic for Africa as it is for America.’

Till not too long ago, he said, the donors thought that what mattered for Africa was largely primary education.

But in these days when knowledge is king — and knowledge workers sit on ‘his’ throne — success depends not on how rich a country is in natural resources but on how well endowed it is in the human ones.

So it’s heartening to see the rapid expansion of both public and private tertiary education in Kenya.

OK, we’re concerned about the quality of many of the programmes, and we anguish over the paucity of PhDs and professors — never mind those of world class.

But surely we must celebrate both the extraordinary demand for degrees among our people and the impressive rise in their supply.

Interestingly, Mwiria said he was encouraging the Commission for Higher Education not only to monitor raw graduation rates but also the rates of employment of each university’s graduates.

The qualification itself is only part of the story, he emphasised, as the real test is the relevance and quality of education the institution provides.

“The purpose of a university is to make you trainable,” he continued, before calling on KCA University’s students to undertake internships in the constituencies — auditing CDF projects, offering basic accounting skills, and fighting tribalism and inequity. “Change the country,” he concluded. “Fight the good fight.” Great stuff, Mr Minister.

As I survey the national higher education scene, I’m happy to note a couple of positive trends.

First, the hitherto neglected field of research is at last receiving attention.

Then — and not unrelated — all kinds of local and international partnerships are springing up, with other universities, with government, with development partners and with the private sector.

On the debit side, while applauding the steady stream of budding accountants and specialists in business and HR and IT, emerging doctors and lawyers and theologians and others, I worry about the absence of anywhere near enough engineering or science graduates. And I worry just as much about the lack of technicians.

A friend who runs a large engineering company told me the other day that not only is there a severe shortage of qualified engineers, but that the shortage of technicians is even more critical.

“For every engineer we need forty technicians,’ he told me, “and they just aren’t available.”

Technical skills are in desperately short supply not only around Africa but also in most Western countries, which also worry about their increasing dependence on outsourced talent — largely from among the emerging Asian power-houses.

It is of small consolation to us in Kenya that in the last 10 years Britain’s place in the world education rankings has slipped from fourth to 14th in science, and from eighth to 24th in mathematics.

The statistics for America read no better, as a result of which the Obama administration has launched a nationwide push (the ‘Race to the Top’ initiative) to raise education standards.

Teachers will now focus more on developing skills and abilities – making sure they prepare students for the workplace.

Good teaching

Above all, the teaching profession must attract much higher quality practitioners.

“Only good teaching will deliver good education’, says a recent White Paper from Britain’s government. And this means “doubling the number of top graduates who enter the profession, and creating new routes for other professionals into the classroom.” Kenyans, are you paying attention?

If we are to be serious about the industrialisation assumed in our Vision 2030 then let both the public and private sectors give much more thought to building the institutions and faculty needed to develop the appropriate people. Starting way before the tertiary level.

The December 2010 conference organised by the Association for Development of Education in Africa that took place in Tunis on improving the quality and relevance of education in Africa came up with some excellent — if unsurprising — conclusions.

The education system, they said, must deliver practical and social skills that prepare the next generation to thrive in a globalised, technology-driven economy. And what else?

That education is no longer about just acquiring knowledge and passing exams. Hats off to that.

It is because of all this that the recent turmoil in the teachers’ union filled me with despair.

Here are the people who have been elected to worry about all of this, and they spend their time squabbling?

Teachers’ unions everywhere are a conservative lot, resisting reforms that make them feel insecure – like using more IT, or assertive management of their individual performances.

By and large, they prefer tomorrow to be like yesterday. So we keep on doing what we’ve always done.

So we keep on getting what we’ve always got. Even as the world changes at a faster pace, even as we need to be ever fitter to survive.

A final thought: will any of the 700 I applauded as they graduated from KCA University become teachers? I doubt it. That’s the problem.

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