President Ruto defends export of labour
President William Ruto on Friday said a bilateral deal Kenya signed with Germany would not erode the skills needed to help industrialise the nation.
At a joint podium with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, Dr Ruto fought back criticism the deal could lead to brain drain as masses of educated Kenyans leave the country.
The deal is known as Kenya-Germany Comprehensive Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement.
Some German dispatches labelled it as an MoU for a pilot project on job placements.
It is meant to provide a framework for cooperation and information exchange on labour mobility, apprenticeship, student training, labour market needs, employment and welfare of workers, readmission, and return, according to a brochure shared with the media yesterday.
But the emerging question was whether it could lead to more educated people fleeing Kenya and leaving the country’s industrialisation targets in limbo.
Skills sets
“We have skills and have developed a huge human capital. As you may be aware, Kenya is a young country,” Ruto told the joint briefing.
“We have a huge young population that can satisfy our industrialisation agenda in Kenya and Germany. In fact, it will provide an avenue for us to tap into the skills in Germany.”
The agreement, President Ruto added, had been negotiated for a year “and focuses on all skills sets”.
He said it would ensure Kenyan training centres raise their standards to be at par with Germany’s, including twinning syllabuses and training Kenyans in German language.
The agreement, he said, would provide opportunities for at least 250 professional, skilled and semi-skilled Kenyans in fields like IT and engineering, to work in Germany.
During campaigns in 2022, Dr Ruto pledged to raise industrialisation in Kenya to at least 15 per cent of the GDP, from seven per cent.
Kenya, traditionally has relied on agriculture and the service industry to sustain its economy, now expected to grow by 5.2 per cent on average, according to the World Bank.
Yet it also promised to address a huge youth unemployment problem amid local scarce jobs, which may mean hunting for opportunities abroad. For that, Ruto’s government has taken flak for exporting labour, some semi-skilled.
In Germany, however, the deal addresses a different political problem: that of illegal migration. Part of the deal will ensure illegal Kenyans in Germany are returned to Nairobi and Kenya will ensure they don’t sneak back.
Germany had been one of the most accommodative western Europeans to migrants but has struggled to tame the irregular flow. Some 92,119 individuals illegally entered Germany between January and September of 2023, according to official figures. Others entered legally but overstayed. There is a group that entered legally, then applied for asylum which was denied but then vanished into the country to dodge deportation.
Officially, this deal is to provide “a win-win model for solving Germany’s labour conundrum occasioned by the retirement of the ‘baby boomer generation’ while offering decent remote jobs to restive but qualified, young Kenyan professionals, according to a dispatch.
“We are happy to export Kenyan talent expertise to support German industrialisation. There is also the opportunity that we can transfer some of your industries to Kenya so that we do not have to export the labour here,” Ruto said.
“This agreement gives us an opportunity to avoid illegal immigrants because illegal immigrants give us a problem to both Kenya and to Germany.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, backing the deal, has had to convince local politicians to support it. At the press conference, he said Germany needs skilled workers from Europe and many other places in the world, legally. The country has taken in some 6 million workers, a figure he said has saved Germany from “a very difficult situation” of an ageing workforce.
“Germany has the opportunity to evade that trap (facing western countries with an ageing workforce) while benefiting both countries,” he said.
That will continue, he said, but Germany wants “a clear reduction of irregular migration and better border management…by using this openness we can use this agreement to return people when it becomes necessary.”
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