Simple step to help young get jobs in Africa
At the beginning of this year, I was invited by Mr. Venuste Twagiramungu, the managing director of TRES, a Rwanda based company, to give a training to newly young graduated students and the staff members.
The goal of the training was, first of all to teach the basic concepts of mobile network in order to gain the practical experience of the work and improve their skills.
It was impossible to cover the overview of all the concepts in two months. The second goal of the training was to give them tips and share as much information as possible so that they can continue learning and look for resources themselves.
When I arrived in Kigali, I spent two months training and sharing my experience in telecoms. I shared with them how to use drive test tools and optimisation tools and we made some field test on live network, including KPI analysis, to get a real understanding of the job of a mobile engineer on a daily basis.
Mr. Venuste has been doing a lot in helping young to improve their skills and to get jobs. In 2015, he opened a training center where you can enjoy, free of charge, WiFi, borrow a computer, have access to several training resources, including mentorship in different areas. Mr. Venuste was looking for someone who could help set up a team in services related to mobile network optimisation and he was willing to make the necessary investment. I couldn’t miss this opportunity to participate in his effort and commitment to helping young graduates.
During my previous assignment in Africa, most of the companies specialised in the activities of telecoms were mainly from outside the African continent and today things have not very much improved. There are many reasons explaining such a situation but generally the main reason lies in the costs of the initial investment for the tools and investment in training to get telecom skills. Those are jobs that local people should also be getting.
Mr. Venuste took a big risk by buying the tools. But the cost didn’t alter his conviction that investing in the future was the best way of empowering the young with new skills. He thinks that new skills will certainly help them find a job, broaden their perspective and learn new opportunities. Recently, TRES has signed some contracts with Ericsson and the team did a great job.
I am sure that similar initiatives exist and I hope that Mr. Venuste’s initiative will motivate and inspire other businesses, organisations and all other people interested in building the capacity and helping young graduates to get jobs.
