The government is establishing 1,450 digital libraries to spur digital job opportunities across the county.
According to the Information, Communication and the Digital Economy Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo, each ward in the country will get one digital laboratory as part of the Government’s plan to put up a digital superhighway.
This is in conjunction with Technical, Industrial, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training Centres (TIVETs) or at the village level.
“The purpose of this is to ensure that each youth gets adequate digital skills and secure digital jobs sourced by the government from global technological companies since there are no longer white-collar jobs,” said the CS.
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Speaking during the launch of the Jitegemee Digital library at the theEldama Ravine Technical and Vocational College, the CS said there are a lot of opportunities in the digital space and that a lot of money can be made from the jobs and even business opportunities.
Further, the CS noted that apart from the digital hubs, the government is establishing 25,000 free public Wi-Fi spots to ensure affordable or free internet across the country.
“The Wi fi hot spots will start in the markets where our mothers and sisters are domiciled by way of itinerary trade, we want to move away from traditional way of doing business by harnessing technology,” added the CS.
The CS said that the government is also digitizing its services and has digitized 4200 services from 350 online services three months ago even as it moves to replace the physical national identity cards with an electronic identification system.
“We are also going to unveil cheap smart enabled phone in the next two months which will retail at 40 dollars, this will be a game changer in this country as we are enhancing connectivity, access and leveraging on technology to increase number of people earning a gainful income,” elaborated the CS.
On his part, the ICT Principal Secretary Engineer John Tanui said many opportunities in different economic sectors can be harnessed through the digital space.
He said the country has a huge population of youth that is well trained and vibrant, and the world desires to get their services through labour exchange.
“There are plenty of opportunities across world with talent gaps, we have the talent and you have seen in the recent past the number of presidents that are visiting our country, one of the key discussions they have is labour exchange, how to access our young people to be able to work for those nations from home,” divulged the PS.
He said digital connectivity will allow people to work remotely and that many jobs now accept people to work remotely.
Tanui added that Business Outsourcing is also a key sector where our youths can work from home and support top-tier companies worldwide, earning a gainful income.
He said the government is targeting 94 TVET centres where each can train 300 youths on online jobs and that this will create a potential income of Kes1.6 billion annually for the economy.
