Zambia: Government claims ignorance of available local ICT skills

GOVERNMENT is outsourcing jobs in the ICT sector because it is ignorant about available professional skills of Zambians, says Copperbelt permanent secretary Villie Lombanya.

Officiating at the 2011 ICT (Information, Communication Technology) conference at the Copperbelt University, Lombanya said the government was now preparing to take a draft bill to Parliament to regulate all ICT professionals in order to maintain professionalism as well as for the government to know the ICT skills available in the country for better planning.

“A number of ICT projects are mostly being given to outsiders because government is finding it difficult to know the professional ICT skills of its citizens.

As permanent secretary for this province, I wish to appeal to all ICT professionals and companies to start affiliating themselves to Computer Society of Zambia before the bill even becomes law,” said Lombanya.

He said the government was planning to implement strategies such as e-governance, e-education, e-health and e-commerce that he said required all ICT skills available to be implemented.

Lombanya said such skills could easily be identified through a professional body like Computer Society of Zambia.

He said Zambia’s economic performance was greatly being influenced by the increasing use of ICTs in the various social and economic sectors.

“The ICT industry is one of the fast growing industries in the country and is attracting a great number of foreign and local investors. The government of Zambia has not spared any efforts to harness ICTs in strengthening Zambia’s position as a regional technology test-bed and launching pad of innovative technologies.

It is the policy of government to fully commercialise ICTs so that the sector can make a significant contribution to our Growth Domestic Product GDP,” he said.

Computer Society of Zambia president Collins Chinyama urged the government and foreign investors in the country to stop outsourcing ICT services as the country had sufficient skills in the ICT field.

“Companies in Zambia face unfair competition because the ICT business is always given to foreign firms especially government jobs,” Chinyama complained.

“Investors should not be allowed to outsource until the computer society say we don’t have the required expertise according to the job required to be done.”

Chinyama also complained that the CSZ had been pushing government to take the draft CSZ bill to Parliament for the past eight years but nothing fruitful had happened.

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