Skills training is a painful headache for many individuals, families, countries, and the entire globe.
What is the course that will lift me to the dignity platform where I can fend for myself, people endlessly wonder.
Is this course marketable, the world keeps asking. Tellingly, there are no easy answers, although people keep taking the next available buses without being sure about the destination. They want to alight mid-stream to no avail.
One of the preferred buses in technical training is enrolling for technical training with individual artisans, popularly known as Jua Kali training.
These are mostly one-man platforms that initially promise to be cheaper than formal centres, but end up causing pain.
Granted, some have gone to such unverified training centres and ended up doing exceptionally well later in life.
But those who do that well say they had to dig deeper, perhaps doing what Cal Newport says in his book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love.
”The things that make a great job, I discovered, are rare and valuable….[Y] ou need to be good at something before you can expect a good job.” This means, among many things, that you need skills, training, and character that makes you the next big thing everywhere you turn.
In early 2019, medical doctor Subiri Obwogo, wrote in a letter to Daily Nation opinion editor that the secret of succefiul people, be they writers like Benjamin Franklin or top athletes David Rudisha of Kenya or entrepreneurs like Bill Gates is not in genes, it is in deliberative practice and thinking.
This is where the top-flight professional footballers belong. You can’t, won’t ignore them.
So, you are hiding in plain sight rushing to a Jua Kali shed, take three or six months of hurried training, and think you can face the world of work with confidence.
Othere join technical colleges while the rest drop university chances in favour of polytechnic diplomas based on their personal goals, because experts say while jobs are increasingly hard to get, they are many in the Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET) corner.
A number have favoured Jua Kali or informal training because it is cheaper at the initial stages and you go straight into practicals, something that has made many Kenyans to write off formal education. ”She has a college diploma, but can’t figure out her field of study. She has no skills,” many are known to quip with derision and disdain.
However, veteran technical trainer Charles Akach, who is the principal of Kabete Technical National Polytechnic, says there is a need to go deeper than what informal training offers. ”We are in a certification world,” he said on a vernacular radio station in January 2020.
”After Jua Kali training, look for certification, even if it is a short tailor-made course of three or six months,” he said, enumerating the benefits of formal training.
Research reveals new things like technologies, materials, or tools that can only be appreciated in a formal setting like a college, Mr Akach said.
You could be using the oldest and crudest methods while there are more advanced tech that could revamp skills and grow a business faster, he explained.
”Developed countries are recognised because of innovation,” the technical trainer said.
President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya once said that top innovators are a sight to behold, professors run to shake their hands and easily ask for help.
US politician Marco Rubio has suggested that his country had better change tack and equip the youth with technical skills while toning down on four-year college courses because, he claimed, ”welders make more money than philosophers”.
Sadly, in Kenya, many people only know about roadside welders and nothing about specialised welding which is a product of intense training, many candidates enrolling for such rare disciplines are trained engineers who have chosen a small but critical area to remain valuable.
Indeed, the government of Kenya has reformed training for all and sundry. It is no longer about the grade one scores in school, be it at Class Eight or at Form Four.
It is about grit and access to information. At Class Eight, one can register with the National Industrial Training Authority (NITA), getting a chance to study craft courses at polytechnics, which is the springboard to a diploma and a degree.
”Wealth is in your hands, not in your fashion sense like wearing ties”, Mr Akach of Kabete said, challenging the technical school graduates to start own companies instead of waiting to be employed.
He asked students, young and old, to liken the search for right technical skills to the journey of making it to heaven for everlasting life.
Dr Cal Newport says in his book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: ”If done right, a professorship is a job for life”.
Keep training and sprucing yourself up to be valuable and rare in the skills marketplace for life.
