Mark Kirumira
13 August 2008
Makerere University's Faculty of Computing and Information Technology (CIT) last week signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Computer Board of Mauritius and the country's investment authority, Invest in Mauritius. The understanding has now concretised the possibility of ferrying over 300 Ugandans to Mauritius for employment.
This was exclusively revealed to Daily Monitor by Mr Narcis T. Rwangoga, the acting head, Department of Computer Science who represented Makerere, specifically CIT in Mauritius.
Divulging the details of the MoU, Mr Rwangoga said: "As Makerere (CIT) we are required to identify prospective candidates with the skills matching what the Mauritian companies need.
Then after the identification process, the Mauritian companies can also interview them either by teleconferencing or flying them over to Mauritius."
He added: "The responsibility of identifying companies entirely lies with Invest in Mauritius, which will do the due diligence for the companies that want to recruit for instance things to do with living conditions and terms of service."
He said that one of the key issues that the Mauritian authorities stressed was having all the successful candidates commit to work in Mauritius for not less than two years because previously, people whom they had recruited worked for less than a year, something that was hampering progress.
"The beauty with Mauritian companies is that they are spread all over Africa, so Ugandans might not only work in Mauritius but elsewhere in Africa where those companies have a presence," he said.
While Mr Rwangoga was in Mauritius, he also managed to ink a deal with First Exec, a matchmaking firm in Mauritius and also managed to seal another with Currimjee Informatics.
On why the deal with First Exec was inevitable, he said; "First Exec proved to be an excellent company for us to associate with because of its good track history in the business of identifying employers." He further explained that its First Exec that is going to set the ball rolling for the 300 Ugandans expected to work in Mauritius starting this year.
Unlike First Exec, which is essentially for matchmaking purposes, Currimjee Informatics will directly employ Ugandans and it is expected it will start recruiting them in the next few weeks.
"I met Mr Raj Lalji, the general manager of Currimjee and his concerns where just personal," he said.
Explaining further: "He wanted us to find out how much fresh graduates earn, whether they will be able to share an apartment and their kind of food."
Other companies that have shown a keen interest are Infineon a Germany-based IT firm and Data Communications Limited.
Explaining why Uganda was the most desired choice for outsourcing labour, he said: "After extensive consultations with the Mauritian people, it was found beyond reasonable doubt that people in Uganda speak English, a language many Mauritians don't speak, yet foreign firms there want people who can speak it." Mauritius is a French- speaking country.
He said that individuals who already have CISCO and/or Microsoft Certifications stand to gain most because these are international qualifications.
The Mauritius government has a deliberate policy of making ICT one of the key engines of growth for the country and it is touted to leap into the top three earners of the economy. One of the strategies of achieving this is through outsourcing.
"Mauritius is a very small country with approximately 1.3 million people," Mr Rwangoga said. Adding: "In their logical thinking, they decided to approach governments in Africa to help close that gap."
The Mauritian government hopes to recruit about 12,000 IT professionals in the next three years. Mauritius got interested in Uganda IT professionals when the faculty dean, Prof. Venansius Baryamureeba met Mauritian technocrats at an IT conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia early this year.
The details of the meeting excited the Mauritians and this prompted the Mauritian government to send two technocrats to Uganda to assess whether Uganda would be one of their IT labour hubs. They reviewed the curricula at CIT.
This eventually culminated in the two governments; Uganda and Mauritius signing a bilateral agreement binding the two parties in ICT matters thereafter.
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