The Ministry of ICT has started the fourth pre-deployment exercise of 400 Presidential Digital Talent Programme interns.
Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru presided over the briefing on Tuesday.
He thanked the President for creating a platform for the youth to add their efforts and contribute to the country’s development using their ICT skills and competencies.
“Respect your seniors and take advantage of the opportunity offered to you through this programme to increase your chances of succeeding,” he said.
Mucheru said the country is changing for the better and digital skills are needed to enable the effective rollout of the overall government’s agenda and inspire economic growth.
“The government is committed to fostering a globally competitive and adaptive ICT workforce through national programmes such as Ajira, Digital Literacy Programme and PDTP to respond to the future skills demand,” he said.
Mucheru challenged the interns to create content that tells the government’s achievements.
He asked them to make use of their skills in ICT to document and disseminate information that will make citizens fully understand government programmes benefitting them.
ICT Authority acting chief executive officer Ronoh Kipronoh said the authority is implementing strategic national ICT programmes and projects as per her mandate.
“Among the planned and ongoing programmes are the Digital Literacy Programme across 24,000 public primary schools, provision of internet and devices, digitization of 5 billion government records, automating government services, digital literacy capacity building for 20 million citizens and broadband connectivity to rural areas,” he said.
He urged the youth to fully participate in the government agenda for a better country and future.
The National Youth Chairperson Deborah Bubi asked the Digitalent interns to champion the implementation of government programmes and develop a positive mindset as they serve the country.
The meeting held at the University of Nairobi was attended by Academic affairs deputy vice chancellor Julius Ogen’go, National Youth Council of Kenya CEO, Roy Telewa, State Department for Youth Affairs, Raymond Ochieng and the ICT Authority director Zilpher Owiti.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
