The State of Information Technology and Telecoms Corporate Training in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania

Trends and and predictions
Corporate training in Kenya is a system of professional development activities to educate employees. These are programmes that are designed for Organisations that may wish to train their staff on specific aspects of their job processes and responsibilities in order to enhance their capacity to deliver desired goals. The state of Corporate Training Technology in Kenya and indeed the region has operated in a very fast changing and dynamic environment due to the fast adoption by the Corporate Sector in new technologies hence the ever-growing need to build capacity among their employees to adopt to this environment by building the desired capacity.
 
The main areas of focus in Information Technology and Telecoms Training in my view can be split in two main categories the vendor based and non-vendor based types of corporate programmes.
 
Vendor Corporate Training in Kenya
In the last 10 years Corporates and Governments in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have invested millions of dollars on vendor based enterprise technologies. These include Oracle, SAP Microsoft, CISCO just to mention a few. This has led for the need to build capacity in implementing and running this technologies in order to achieve the intended efficiency and return on investment. We believe one of the challenges of implementation the Government of Kenya is facing after investing heavily in Oracle’s IFMIS (Integrated Financial Management System) is lack of capacity due to inadequate training at both National and County Government level.
 
Non-Vendor Corporate Training 
This is where Corporate Training that does not adopt any Vendor based training curriculum but however uses content from best industry practice and accepted frameworks to deliver training. Corporate Training in Kenya range from those that use frameworks such as PRINCE2® and PMP® for project management professionals.
Another example is COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies) which is a good practice framework created by international professional association ISACA for Information Technology (ITI) management and governance. This standards and frameworks have been adopted globally in order to deliver efficiencies in the corporate environment especially when adopting and working with enterprise technologies such as the ones I mentioned earlier.
 
In telecoms corporate non vendor courses focus again on best practice and adoption of new industry standards and technologies.  A good example is the FOA ( the Fiber Optic Association) which is an international non-profit educational organization. FOA is chartered to promote professionalism in fiber optics through education, certification and standards. It also does it  through  GVF (Global VSAT Forum) which is a membership of VSAT suppliers and users. It delivers certifications that are the established standard for satellite communications skills worldwide.
 
Corporates in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are actively engaging in capacity building however the skills gap still remains huge due to smaller budget allocations, lack of prioritization by management and lack of local skilled trainers in various areas of expertise hence the over reliance of expensive foreign trainers.
 
In conclusion in order appreciate the efficiencies the enterprise technologies bring to any organization there is a need to invest more in capacity building through training and courses that are both vendor and non-vendor based.
 
African eDevelopment Resource Centre has been offering this vendor and non-vendor technology training for now over a decade across Africa. You can also take a look at some of the best ICT courses in Kenya.
Trademarks
PRINCE2® is a registered trade mark of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.
The PMI Registered Education Provider logo and PMP® are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.