University students to benefit through cloud computing skills from Governnment,AWS

Ten thousand students in public universities in Kenya are set to be equipped with cloud computing skills following a partnership between the ICT Authority and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The two-year programme which extends into 2023 targets to enrol students drawn from ten public universities with an aim of increasing skills gap and providing opportunities available in cloud computing worldwide.

Speaking on the side-lines of the 12th edition of Connected Summit in Diani, Kwale County, Information Communication and Digital Economy Principal Secretary John Tanui says the training will ensure the country has enough skilled manpower especially as the government embarks on the digitalization of government services and digitization of an estimated five billion public records and also create job opportunities to thousands of youths in the country.

“All our county headquarters are connected with fibre and now we are aiming to connect every ward. Through that we will ensure we are able to connect our schools, about 40,000 institutions and 13,000 hospitals and this connectivity is to open possibilities for our people across the world,” said PS Tanui.

He added, ”So as we build that we are also looking at how to digitalize our government services and ensure they are provided online and we build a paperless government. Through that we will be generating quite a lot of data and this data needs to be stored somewhere and this is attracting also global players who are interested to put cloud infrastructure in the country.” said PS Tanui.

Amazon Web Services Regional Public Sector Lead for East West, and Central Africa Robin Njiru said the training which will be conducted through AWS Academy and Computer Learning Centre.

“The initial phase involves training of at least two trainers per university that are then going to ensure this is scalable,” said Robin.

“Through AWS Academy we are providing the curriculum resource area, very updated and maintained by AWS. We are also going to be skilling the trainers.”

Revenues in the cloud computing market worldwide is expected to reach at least $1.2 trillion by 2027 from an estimated $546 billion recorded last year.

ICT Authority Chief Executive Officer Stanley Kamanguya says the authority is also targeting to engage the among others, Public Service Commission (PSC), Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) to map out the skills gap which exists in the country.

“We shall be embarking on training both the technical ICT officers for them to be able to deploy, manage and maintain the systems and the infrastructure were are putting in place and also the general public to enable them use these services,” added Stanley Kamanguya, ICT Authority CEO.

Robin also lauded the move by the government to repeal the law which requires foreign investors in the ICT industry to cede 30pc of their shareholding to local investors saying the firm will seek collaborations in various opportunities in the digital space.