Tech boom is here, will Kenyans get the jobs?

Somewhere in Kenya today, a young engineering graduate is sending out applications and hearing nothing back. In the same week, data centre operators and technology companies around the world are advertising for critical facilities engineers, cooling technicians, cloud engineers, cybersecurity analysts, software developers and machine learning engineers. Satellite companies are searching for radio frequency and spectrum engineers. Many of these jobs stay open for months.

That graduate could fill one of them, if only we prepare them now, not tomorrow. The opportunity is already at our door. Data centres are rising in Nairobi and along the coast. New submarine cables are landing on our shores. Satellite operators are entering the market, and mobile operators are preparing to connect ordinary phones directly to satellites. The Communications Authority of Kenya has just consulted on a new satellite licensing framework.

We must also understand what a data centre has become. It is no longer a warehouse of servers. Technology leaders now call the AI data centre a factory. Power and data go in, and intelligence comes out. Like any factory, it needs people to build it, power it, cool it, run it and write the software that makes it productive.

This calls for a major career shift. Our electrical, mechanical, civil, structural and telecommunications engineers are the foundation of this new economy. An electrical engineer can become a data centre power specialist. A mechanical engineer can move into liquid cooling, one of the most sought after skills in AI data centres. A telecommunications engineer is one step away from satellite and spectrum work. What they need is focused retraining and recognised certification.

These skills are worth a great deal. In the United States, a typical software developer earns about Sh1.4 million a month. A senior machine learning engineer earns close to Sh2.4 million. Here, a programmer typically earns between Sh50,000 and Sh190,000 a month. That gap is the size of the opportunity.

The good news is that most of this work can be done from Kenya. Global companies already work around the clock by passing tasks between time zones. Kenya is perfectly placed for this. Our working day overlaps fully with Europe and the Middle East. We have an English speaking workforce, a strong record in remote work and submarine cables on our coast.

Are we preparing fast enough for these opportunities? Not yet. The global race to build AI data centres and satellite networks is moving at extraordinary speed. Our curricula and certification systems are moving at the pace of ordinary planning. Others are moving faster. Nigeria’s Three Million Technical Talent programme has already trained more than 135,000 people. Ghana’s One Million Coders programme aims to train 400,000 this year alone.

Kenya has strong foundations in programmes such as Ajira Digital, but we have no national target for the data centre, AI and satellite jobs. So what should we do? Train for real jobs.

Our universities and TVET institutions should work directly with the companies building this infrastructure, train against real vacancies and build international certifications into their courses.

We should retrain the engineers we have. Fast conversion courses, backed by the Engineers Board of Kenya and industry, can move practising engineers into data centre and satellite roles within months.

Make every investment a training opportunity. When an investor builds a data centre here, Kenya should ask for a training academy to come with it.

Lead Africa in satellite skills. No country on the continent has a dedicated satellite and spectrum skills academy. Kenya can be the first.

Sell Kenya to the world. We should market the country as a base for global technical operations, and support our young people with reliable power and connectivity and fair tax treatment for those earning from abroad.

Plan power and people together. Data centres follow reliable, affordable electricity. Plan one without the other, and neither the investment nor the jobs will come.

Above all, someone must own the plan. Kenya needs a National AI and Digital Careers Council, shared equally between government and the private sector. Such a council would give investors a clear answer to their simplest question: will we find the skills and the talent here? Done right, it would make Kenya a global AI and digital talent hub.

To give this the urgency it deserves, Kenya should declare 2027 its year of artificial intelligence. It would be a national rallying point for government, industry, universities and young people, with clear targets for how many Kenyans are trained, certified and employed in AI, data centre and satellite careers by the end of the year.

Kenya has every advantage: a young population, a strong technology culture, renewable energy and a strategic coastline. What we cannot afford is to watch the factories of the digital age arrive while our young people stand outside the gate.

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Dr Saroni is the Chief Executive Officer of AfriTrade Consulting Group and a Partner at S&S Advocates.