Deloitte to launch academy in Kenya

Deloitte & Touche plans to launch a graduate training academy before September as it seeks to diversify its operations away from auditing and corporate consultancy.

The company will recruit staff on behalf of companies and train them on IT and business courses at the facility in a bid to equip them with workplace skills.

Human resource experts have complained that there is a disconnect between training in universities and skills demands by corporate Kenya, a gap that Deloitte intends to bridge with the academy.

“We are planning to introduce Deloitte graduate academy…which takes the fresh graduate from the university and makes them market ready by training them on how to apply what they learnt,” John Kiare, a director at Deloitte told the Business Daily on Thursday.

The training at the academy will take between six and 10 months. Companies will cater for the training costs of the fresh graduates they enrol in the programme.

The thirst for higher education has seen university students rise from 118,239 in 2007 to 198,260 last year, straining the institutions and compromising academic standards.

“Most graduates have theoretical knowledge but lack the skills to apply what they learnt in classes,” said Albert Njoki, a human resource consultant.

This has made it difficult to most graduates to meet the needs of corporate Kenya, whose thirst for top talent has increased as labour emerges as a profit and market share driver in an economy where companies are matched on capital and quality of their goods.

In this new economy, companies are developing good business ideas that are being copied with speed, forcing employers to be constantly on the lookout for innovators.

This type of thinking is making human capital the most sought after resource in the production system and an arsenal for companies that seek to grow. Kenya will become the second country in Africa to host the Deloitte graduate academy after it launched a similar academy in South Africa six years ago
The Deloitte academy will be rolled out in other parts of East Africa, and the audit firm hopes it will diversify its earnings and boost its recruitment arm division.

Though the pool of graduates has increased, executives reckon that they are finding it difficult to get star performers, stretching the labour market for the required skills to the limit and increasing poaching.

This has increased the level of joblessness in the Kenyan economy as the private sector lost its jobs creation momentum last year as economic growth decelerated for the first time since the 2008 post-election crisis.

More than 700,000 high school and college graduates enter the labour market every year and the creation of 520,100 jobs means the ranks of the jobless rose by more than 200,000 deepening the Kenya’s bourgeoning unemployment crisis.