The technical skills sector is experiencing a surge in demand, particularly in welding engineering, which has remained mostly unexplored for decades.
The demographic decline in the West has resulted in a lack of technical skilled labourers in many skill trades and cadres.
Consequently, taking advantage of the youthful and expanding African population to pursue the growing number of career opportunities ,there has been a global need for skilled personnel, particularly welders, as the industrial revolution progresses.
Specialised welders are currently needed for several projects across the globe in a variety of industries, such as shipbuilding, manufacturing, and infrastructure development.
There are currently many projects around the world requiring specialised welders in various sectors, including infrastructure development, manufacturing, and ship building.
Currently there are over 100 welding job opportunities across the globe, mainly in Eastern Europe (Romania, Poland, Slovakia, and Germany) and the Middle East (Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia).
Some Kenyans have already been shortlisted. However, there is still a shortage of human labour that cannot cater for the existing demand.
Speaking during the international job fair for welders held at KICC, Nairobi, Kenya, Stephen Lyoba, the founder and CEO of East African Institute of Welding,
Said that welding is very expensive in terms of the cost incurred in procuring the pieces of equipment, making it difficult for many TVET institutions to acquire all the equipment; therefore, many institutions are underequipped. This reflects on students performance, as many of the Kenyan students and welders are underskilled and thus fail to meet international standards.
His sentiments were echoed by Ronny Friedl, the CEO of CTCWeld, a global training and consulting company.
Ronny noted that “I have been to companies; they don’t even know how to set the welding machine correctly. The challenge is actually the knowledge. It’s the biggest challenge because knowledge does not exist, so you have a quality challenge. And when quality is not met, of course, then it comes to dangerous accidents and all the things that need to be prevented.”.
Stephen Lyoba made an appeal to the government to support welders with finances and the Youth Fund, whose core mandate is to enable entrepreneurship for youth in Kenya.
They are requesting if it can be used to facilitate the youthful welders to transit from Kenya to other parts of the globe to practice welding.
