State set to roll out software certification for local developers

The government will next Tuesday unveil a Software Certification Program aimed at boosting the uptake of locally developed applications.

Lack of standards and certification has seen many corporate firms go for software developed in countries like India at higher cost than locally developed ones.

The Certification Project dubbed ‘Chipuka’-which translates to “to emerge”, seeks to establish an authentic software developer certification for Kenya. The program has been designed in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University.

“The certification will help employers to easily identify software developers who have the skills necessary to carry out IT jobs to a professional and world-class standard,” said Paul Kukubo, chief executive officer Kenya ICT Board.

At the moment it is estimated that local market only contributes to less than ten per cent of the software developed in the country despite most organisations automating their services as they adopt electronic payrolls and electronic banking solutions.

The program is also aimed at raising the quality of homegrown computer applications and sharpens their competitiveness on the global platform. The move is also in response to the low regard in which computer users have held locally developed software in favour of global brands such as Microsoft.

That consumers favour international brands has been blamed on the absence of harmonised standards for software development and performance levels, an anomaly that the government now wants to address.

The Kenya ICT Board says the certification programme that will regulate the theoretical and practical aspects of writing and executing software codes.

Software developers said the benchmarks could also help them overcome the lack of a comprehensive training regime hurdle that has prevented them from honing their skills in developed software markets.

Previous attempts by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) and the industry regulator Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) to come up with standards expected to lift local products to global standards such as ISO and International Certification of Engineering (ICE) have not yielded fruit.

Besides assuring quality, software developers have previously asked the the government to grant tax exemptions, effectively tackle piracy and secure credit lines for software development.

Software intellectual property rights are yet to be admitted as collateral locally.