The Government will employ 400 Information, Communication and technology (ICT) fresh graduates by October this year to help drive ICT agenda in public institutions.
Information, Communication and Technology Authority Chairman, Dr. Matunda Nyanchama, said the graduates will be employed as management trainees for a period of one year before fully engaged to help enhance service provision at various public departments.
Dr. Matunda who spoke during the launch of this year’s OLX Social Media Awards the Government targets to create 180,000 jobs in the ICT sector by 2017 to boost the sector’s contribution to the GDP to 8 per cent.
“We want to ensure full digitisation of government operations to increase efficiency in service delivery and weed out corruption associated with manual processes,” said Dr. Matunda.
Speaking at the same event, various players in the digital communications sector called for increased budgetary allocation for social media departments by the public and private sector to boost employment creation and economic empowerment
They said if well funded, the social media sector can help boost employment creation for the youth.
OLX, leading online classifieds, Country Manager, Peter Ndiang’ui said there is need to adopt creative solutions informed by research on impact of social media to solve the growing unemployment problems in the country.
“For Kenyan companies the growing use of social media has brought itself a new challenge that has resulted in the emergence of digital agencies and social media experts charged with developing and implementing strategies to grow the companies online fan base,” said Mr. Ndiangu’i.
One of the foundations for the ICT Masterplan 2014 is human capital and workforce development which aims at developing quality ICT human resources as a pre-requisite to the development of a viable ICT sector. Key to this being ensuring that ICT development, implementation, and exploitation are an integral and sustainable component of development.
OLX are the title sponsors of the Awards now in its third year. Other sponsors are Trinc Media Ltd, a digital agency, engaging in web design, social media strategy, and digital campaign execution, and several other corporate organizations and aims at recognizing and rewarding individuals who have contributed towards improvement of lives through good use of various social media platforms.
The theme of the OLX Kenya Social Media Awards, which was also unveiled at the meeting, is social media and economic empowerment.