People with disabilities with be equipped with digital skills through training and internship opportunities offered by Safaricom, SightSavers and National Training Authority(NITA).
The partnership will see the first cohort of 34 interns from the Bridge IT Academy join Safaricom for a 6-month internship program following their completion of a 9-month digital skills training at NITA, which was facilitated by experts from Cisco.
Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa said the training will go along way in ensuring people living with disability have the requisite trainings.
“Following the Global Disability Summit of 2018, we committed to supporting the economic empowerment of people with disabilities. In line with our vision to become a purpose-led Technology Company, we seek to grow the pool of talent of people with disabilities with digital skills,” said.
The IT Bridge Cisco Academy course ran for the first time in 2021 as part of the Inclusive Futures initiative to improve access to work for people with disabilities. The initiative is delivered by Sightsavers, an international organisation working to prevent avoidable blindness and support equality for people with disabilities, and United Disabled Persons of Kenya (UDPK), which advocates for the rights of people with disabilities in Kenya.
“Our role is to support young people with disabilities launch their careers through our Inclusive Employment Programme. They now have a strong career foundation in IT – skills that are in high demand as the world of work becomes increasingly digital,” said Moses Chege, Country Director, Sightsavers.
“We are glad that these interns will get equal opportunities to work in a competitive environment. After the training they underwent at NITA, they have valuable skillsets that will be instrumental to Safaricom in the digital field,” said Mr. Stephen Ogenga, the Director General – NITA.
The interns, who are now CISCO Certified Network Associates (CCNA) and Cisco Certified Technicians (CCT), will get the opportunity to work in various departments within Safaricom including Digital Engineering, Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing, Big Data, IP networks among other digital-related fields.
