East African Business Week (Kampala)

Email Print Share

Tanzania: ICT Vital for Tanzania Youth Job Creation

By Kenan Kalagho, 27 May 2013

Dar es Salaam — Tanzania's vision of becoming a middle income country by 2025 will depend on the growth of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.

(Dr Hassan Mshinda from COSTECH (left) franked by Dr Deidre Lillis, the Head of School, Computing, Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland Photo By Kenan Kalagho)

There is also need for the country to realize the importance of innovations in the ICT sector in order to stay in touch with the rest of the world.
Dr. Hassan Mshinda was speaking in Dar es Salaam last week, during a breakfast meeting on theme 'The growth in ICT sector: insights from Ireland's success'.
Dr. Mshinda is the Director General of the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH).
"We need to look at the strategies the country has in place with regards to ICT," he said.
He said growth of ICT has been widely pointed out as a major boost in creating jobs for the many young people in the country. He said ICT ranks fourth as the fastest growing sector in the world.
"There is need to change the mindset as far as ICT is concerned from crowd sourcing to analytical and digital economy," Dr. Mshinda said.
He said Tanzanian universities have to be encouraged to start incubation programmes. The country had many potential innovators and these human resources needed to be tapped.
Dr. Mshinda said the country was trying to come up with an ecosystem where young innovators could be nurtured. Lack of enough money however, is hurting ICT development in Tanzania.
Dr Deidre Lillis, the Head of School, Computing, Dublin Institute of Technology said the development and nurturing of youthful talent in ICT could be vital for job creation in Tanzania and the rest of Africa.
She said that it was important for the country to nurture young innovators so that such expertise could be translated into job creation for the growing youth population.
"You don't need big equipment in ICT like that of agriculture and mining industries investments. You can have an ICT company of 15 people which can be able to compete globally because the application of peoples' skills can be able to generate jobs from around the globe" Dr Lillis said.
Dr. Lillis said education was a key resource and vocational training was important for ensuring that skills that would be required for the country's demand in ICT are passed on to the growing youth population.