A Strategy for Developing High-end ICT talent for Emerging African NRENs – The case of KENET

Emerging African National Research and Education build and maintain advanced broadband networks that interconnect universities and research institutes. In order to achieve their mandates, emerging NRENs must attract and retain a critical mass of high-end ICT talent to operate the broadband networks and develop innovative services to the higher education community (Haruta et al 2011). In most cases, the NRENs must rapidly develop a critical mass of networking staff to operate the networks and develop the services in a cost-effective fashion. This paper describes the strategy adopted by the Kenyan research and education network, KENET, to attract, develop and retain the necessary networking professionals that operate the broadband network. The strategy aims to create a pipeline of high-end ICT professionals from a large base of entry-level ICT staff that are recent graduates of electrical engineering, computer science and information systems. This paper concludes that this strategy could be adopted by other African NRENs and higher education institutions to develop the required critical mass of high-end ICT talent.