Specialization, that’s
dangerous stuff, believe me if you want to suffer in your career call yourself
names like programmer, developer, network admin or whatever. In Africa the
opportunities they are as they come.
Professionalism isn’t for us make sure you now at least something in
everything that is how we survive in Africa as ICT professionals. Sometimes you
are broke with nothing in the pocket and there the deal come of developing a
simple website with only the basics but since you have chosen to call yourself
and network engineer with no knowledge
at all in HTML then you are missing a chance of making a good money out of this
basic HTML knowledge.
Platform based, never depend in a
particular platform or technology even if the difference is small compared to
other technologies. Someone asked me one time to advise him wither he should
continue with CCNP after finishing CCNA or he should go for MCSE so that he can
have the basic knowledge for both Cisco and Microsoft platforms. Franklyn
speaking my answer was go for MCSE because I knew the chances of getting hired
in Africa for being a Cisco certified network professional they are there but a
person with both the knowledge would be more valuable in the African industry
since most of the companies are either in Microsoft or Cisco technologies and
without forgetting Linux servers are getting up with speed. Never sticks to a
particular knowledge or platform know something in everything.
Latest and complicated technologies, there
is nothing wrong knowing or learning a new technology for your own good as an
individual but be careful when you want to implement that knowledge directly to
your business or company, most of the time Africa has been reluctant with the
rate of change of technologies. Usually the companies and clients they try to
adapt to the situations slowly. I remember when Adobe Flash came out most of my
friends used to like developing their website using Adobe Flash and practicing
using Action script 3.0 as their developing language but letter on they came to
change since they were receiving a lot of complaints from their customers
complaining about their sites failing to open up and take long time to load and
the contents to appear. The lesson here is there was nothing wrong for them to
using Adobe Flash that time but the environments is what let them down at that
time the speed of the internet was slow, most of the people lack awareness of
the technology and even some people didn’t know how to use other browsers as
Mozilla Firefox or Chrome. Hence the result was a complete failure.
Forgetting
the basics, I had a chance to work as Data Analyst in a government
authority as a contract worker managing the data and analyzing them using
Microsoft Excel before generating graphs and presentation through MS- Power
point, believe me I use to call myself a Computer pioneer but when I reach
there and see what people are able to do with Microsoft excel it was amazing
experience. Sometimes the complex and advanced knowledge you have in IT becomes
useless in Africa if you don’t know the basics, because most of the time people
use the basic IT software or platforms to do their works. Just recently there
have been introduction of SPSS in Tanzania and many logistic companies use the
software as their major means of data management and report generation.
Failing
to study the systems, understand what people want, don’t just stays there
inside your room writing codes developing application which does not even fit
to our local communities. This goes even to the people who study things which
are not applicable in Africa. Data mining and software testing these are great
two careers in Asia and Europe but for Africa we don’t consider data minor as a
professional since we think anyone can search for the data and the client is
the tester of the software. That is the very simple example on how the system
thinks about our careers. Among the
major mistake you might do is to fail to understand the people in the industry.