Last week, the Government of Rwanda, through Rwanda Development Board, signed an agreement with Andela, a technology training and job placement firm, for the establishment of a Pan-African tech hub in the country.

Under the deal, up to 500 Rwandans with expertise in software development will be recruited for global tech giants such as IBM, MasterCard and Github, and offered six months paid training. 

Andela works with over 150 firms spread across 45 cities globally.

The training is among the best in the software development industry.

However, to make the most of the opportunity, local varsities and other stakeholders in the technology sector ought to do more to ensure that skills sought by the firm are readily available locally. 

Though the initial intake of 500 ‘interns’ in the first five years might come off as easily achievable, the experiences of local employers who have hired local graduates present a worrying trend.

A significant number of local employers have generally questioned the quality of local graduates and the tech sector is no exception.

This challenge needs to be addressed if Rwandans are to truly make the most of the country’s partnership with Andela.

Previously, several attempts to link local tech graduates to the market out there were often frustrated by the quality of graduates. 

For instance, despite existing for several years, local incubation hub K-Lab, which had browed a leaf of the famous Silicon Valley in San Francisco, U.S., has only been able to deliver a handful of tech enterprises. 

This has partly been blamed on the low skills level on the part of the target graduates.

For Rwanda to make the most of the opportunities presented by the Andela partnership there is an urgent need to review the skills among local tech graduates as well as the existing curriculum.