The apprentice program revolutionizing Kenya’s labor market
Life has not always been kind to Diba Boru. His parents died in quick succession when he was only five. Their death scattered what remained of the family. Separated from his siblings, Diba found himself alone in an orphanage in Marsabit, one of Kenya’s poorest counties.
Diba was tough and bright, however. Shrugging off his disadvantages, he won a scholarship to secondary school. There, he worked so hard that his public examination scores were among the top four percent of all results countrywide. He could have strolled into any university he liked, but for one thing: he had no way of paying the fees.
His dreams shattered, Diba drifted from job to job, rarely earning more than $60 a month. Then, late last year, he stumbled across a social media post advertising an apprenticeship program. The details seemed too good to be true: For two years, participants would receive training both in the classroom and the workplace. Better still, they would be paid while they learned.
Vocational training that combines classroom teaching with hands-on work experience may be a well-known and much cherished system in the German-speaking world, but it is a rarity in Africa. For the Hilti Foundation, this gap presented an opportunity to embark upon a project designed to transform both the lives of underprivileged youngsters and address the skilled labor shortage that is stunting many economies on the continent.
Teaming up with Swisscontact and other partners, the Hilti Foundation launched PropelA, an employer-led dual apprenticeship program that is training young electricians and plumbers in Kenya. Now in its second year, the project is already having a profound impact on Kenya’s burgeoning construction sector, an increasingly vital driver of economic growth in the country.
Although it is the leading economy in eastern Africa, Kenya struggles with both a significant skills shortage and the challenge of incorporating one million youngsters, who enter the labor market every year, into its work force. The PropelA project addresses both issues by meeting the needs of the market in a way that has not happened before and by providing opportunities to those, like Diba, who would otherwise have missed out on them.
At the age of 25, Diba had given up on his dream of becoming an electrical engineer and seemed destined to be another case of squandered potential in a country where the poorest so often cannot afford the costs associated with a professional qualification.
Thanks to the PropelA program, however, Diba was not left outside the system. Now, six months into a two-year course,he feels that he once again has prospects.
“I love the way that I am being equipped with skills and knowledge, both at school and on the jobsite,” he says. “At the same time I can also cater to my needs. I now have enough to survive on. It has been a life-changing opportunity for me thanks to an education system that genuinely seems unique.”
Having secured selection to the course last year, Diba was apprenticed to Mehta Electricals, one of the most prominent electrical contractors in Kenya’s construction sector and an enthusiastic participant in the PropelA program.
Diba spends one week a month training at the Don Bosco Boys’ Town, a vocational training institute in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, that provides technical courses in plumbing and electrical installation to young men and women from disadvantaged backgrounds. Founded in 1985 to provide training to the ‘poorest of the poor,’ this celebrated institute is now home to two new state-of-the art training facilities built specifically for the PropelA program. A plumbing training center, funded and equipped by the Geberit Group, is already operational. A new electrical center, funded by the Hilti Foundation and built to the highest specifications, will replace the facility presently being used by PropelA apprentices in the coming months.
For the other three weeks, Diba, like the 120 other members of his cohort, receives on-the-job training at one of Mehta’s construction projects. As a partner in the program, the company provides its PropelA apprentices with a mentor, covers the modest cost of their tuition fee and gives them a monthly stipend.
For the 34 companies that have partnered with the PropelAprogram, the investment has been more than worth it.
Bobby Singh Jandu, managing director of Allied Plumbers, a PropelA partner, used to despair about the graduates he would recruit from Kenya’s vocational or polytechnic schools. Most had received theoretical training, which was often outdated or irrelevant, but had little practical experience and often struggled with basic tasks. Few survived for long.
“It is very hard to find skilled manpower in Kenya,” he notes. “You have to develop it in-house. What is coming out of the polytechnics is mostly not credible at all.”
Swisscontact country director Lilian Mwai, Hilti Foundation Trustee Matthias Gillner, Allied Plumbers managing director Bobby Singh Jandu, and Hilti Foundation managing director Werner Wallner at a government affordable housing scheme in Kibera, Nairobi.
Like other CEOs, he was invited on a fact-finding mission to observe Switzerland’s vocational system and was struck by the way the private sector was so heavily involved in training. He came home determined to support Swisscontact’s ambitions of developing a system that would actually meet the needs of the market.
Government officials were only too happy to endorse the scheme. Successive Kenyan presidents have placed affordable housing at the center of their policy objectives only to see targets missed, in part because of a lack of skilled labor.
Work swiftly began on adapting the Swiss model.
“The Swiss curriculum was more action-oriented in every context and more practical than our local curriculum,” says Lucy Muchemi, a consultant recruited by Swisscontact to shape the new course. “It simplified training, breaking it down into easily understood chunks. What we did was to adapt it and localize it to a Kenyan context.”
Delighted with the new curriculum, Kenya’s National Industrial Training Authority was happy both to recognize and certify it, ensuring that those who completed the course earned a nationally accepted qualification.
The result has been nothing short of revolutionary. Veroline Amadi used to teach electrical training in the state vocational system before she was recruited onto the PropelA project and trained to adopt the new curriculum. The difference could not be starker.
In her past job, she usually had to teach 70 students at a time. Lessons were theory-based and teacher-led, in part because there were never enough materials for practical work. Students were often asked to provide their own.
By contrast, Veroline now teaches small groups of 17 students who have access to “good quality materials of sufficient quantity,” donated by the Hilti Foundation and its partner, the Geberit Group. This has allowed trainers to introduce modern techniques that are rarely covered in state institutions.
“In my past job it was very difficult to have an individual impact but here I have been able to develop a proper relationship with each student,” she says. “I have been trained to move from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered approach, which the students find so much more engaging.”
The results, she believes, will be profound: “Dual training is solving the needs of the country. What we are doing is becoming a benchmarking institution for others to follow. We are developing the professional skills that the market is looking for and we are giving our students confidence to take on all challenges successfully.”
Confidence, determination and gratitude are traits that seem universal among the 220 apprentices on the PropelA program. Mentors and employers note that since many have had to overcome profound difficulties in life, their work ethic, ambition and desire to succeed make them stand out.
Lucy Kibanda, who is 22, was also unable to go to universitybecause her parents, who are subsistence farmers, couldn’t afford the fees. Life was a struggle. She lost her job in an agricultural shop after the owner defaulted on a loan and had to lay off workers. Then she saw her own attempt to start a business fail after a major client’s check bounced. She eventually ended up as a house cleaner earning just $40 a month. The PropelA project has offered her a fresh start.
Lucy is often exhausted by the commute she needs to take to get to her training, despite which, her attendance is nearly perfect.
“I was so happy when the opportunity came through,” she said. “I felt a sense of hopelessness when I had to give up my university offer. But now I have a chance to change my life and I can have hope for the future, hope that I will get a good job, inspire others and bring change to my community.”
Lucy was disadvantaged not just by her background but also by her gender. Women hold just three percent of jobs in the construction sector and fewer still in the electrical segment. The PropelA project is hoping to change that with recruitment drives that target women in particular.
The transformation in the lives of youngsters like Lucy Kibanda and Diba Boru, and the way they are already proving their valueto the companies that apprenticed them, is proof of how transformative the PropelA program is proving to be.
Although only in its second year, the project’s impact is already clear in the plumbing and electrical sectors. The course will eventually enroll 1,000 students in two different schools. More importantly, however, the Hilti Foundation’s hope is that the project will act as a lighthouse, inspiring others in the construction sector and beyond to emulate and replicate the program.
"We want to revolutionize the vocational education system in Kenya and provide young people with the essential training they need to build sustainable careers," says Werner Wallner, CEO of the Hilti Foundation. "As companies recognize the value of this program, we believe it will set a standard for replication in other industries and professions, fostering widespread economic growth and opportunity."
The PropelA project in numbers:
2 – The number of years an apprenticeship course lasts
35 – The number of partner companies sponsoring apprentices in the program
220 – The number of apprentices recruited in the first two years
2022 – The year the PropelA project began
2025 – The year the pilot phase ends
1,000 – The number of apprentices enrolled by the end of the pilot phase