Cabinet Secretary for ICT Joe Mucheru has said graduating college and University youth should prepare themselves for technology and innovation driven job market if they expect to get employment.

Mr. Mucheru said the traditional labour market was shrinking paving way for organizations to offload non-core work to digital platforms that were economical and efficient and therefore the need for graduates to adapt to the changing digital employment.

Mr. Mucheru said, as work evolve, organizations seek to source for on-demand labour through on-line platforms that disrupt established business systems and render many traditional jobs redundant.

The Cabinet Secretary noted that as “Modern society is adapting to the ongoing push to transition to fragmented division of labour that will assign highly specialized tasks to people at the point of need” new job opportunities and categories that never existed were being created.

Speaking at the University’s 39th Graduation ceremony on Saturday, Mucheru said work has been radically transformed by the advent of Internet, enabling employers to gain access to a vast pool of skilled workers at convenient time.

He said, the Government has rolled out the Digital Literacy Programme (DLP) to equalize learning opportunities for all pupils in class one and make the children to be globally competitive from the onset.

Mr. Mucheru added that, training for 10, 000 youth under the Ajira Digital Programme that aims to introduce young people to online work and provide them with the necessary tools and mentorship to enable them to work and earn a decent income from digital platforms was ongoing. Mr. Mucheru pointed out that, plans are underway to conduct training for another 75,000 Kenyans who have registered under the program.

The government, he observed, encourages the Private sector especially the captains of industry to move their non-core work online. He said the government under its digitization programme also intends to place some tasks on online work platforms and make it accessible to young people.

Over 700 graduates were awarded Diplomas, Undergraduate and Post-graduate degrees in various academic disciplines. Among those present was Chancellor Prof. Mary Murimi, Chairman of the University Education Prof. Chacha Nyaigoti Chacha among others.

By Cheruiyot Korir – July 3, 2017