The government plans to leverage skills in the Jua Kali by certifying Kenyans who work in the informal sector without academic documents to make them competitive in the global job market.
Principal Secretary, State Department for Labour and Skills Development Shadrack Mwadime, said close to 19 million Kenyans in the Jua Kali sector have acquired valuable skills and knowledge through apprenticeship for many years but are not certified.
This, Mwandime noted, made it difficult for them to exploit job opportunities due to lack of professional qualification documents.
Mwadime said the government will, through the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) policy, issue certificates to Kenyans in the sector based on their work experience.
“The majority of these Kenyans in the informal sector have experience with what they have been doing over the years. The greatest challenge they face in establishing confidence with their clients is lack of certificates in accordance with the skills they have gained, and that’s why the government came up with the RPL policy, “he said.
The PS disclosed that, through the policy, the government will assign assessors from the various technical institutes to evaluate the skills and competencies that Kenyans in the sector have acquired and certify them based on their work experience.
“Besides creating confidence in their clients, the certification will also enable Kenyans to capitalise on employment opportunities in the Western world and reduce employment, which is extremely high, especially among young people,” said Mwadime.
He spoke on Monday in Machakos when he officially launched a three-day joint peer learning and capacity-building workshop on sector skills bodies and recognition of prior learning between Kenya and Nigeria.
He reiterated that RPL aligns with the government’s Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA), which seeks to improve the social and economic status of Kenyans at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
“Our expectations are that once these Kenyans in the informal sector get job opportunities abroad, they will acquire more skills, and once they come back to the country, they will transfer the technology they have learned and establish enterprises to produce goods that can compete in the international market and expand the economy,” said the PS.
The Chairperson of the Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria (CORBON), Samson Opaluwah, said the informal sector contributes hugely to the economy and underscored the need to properly certify, regulate, and license it.
Opaluwah noted that the informal sector can further boost the country’s economy and employ labour if given support through recognition, finance, and technology.
“Africa has a huge challenge in the unregulated informal sector. “The time has come for Africa to solve its problems through homegrown solutions because adequate skills will free them from poverty,” he said.
The CORBON chairperson hailed the Kenya National Federation of Juakali for opening their doors to the delegation from Nigeria to share experiences and exchange ideas on sector skills that will lift Africa.
By Roselyne Kavoo and Anne Kangero
