Kigali Institute of Science and Technology

THE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICE CENTER (ICT)

To become a Regional Centre of Excellence in delivering hands on vocational and professional courses in ICT and Technology related fields, carry out extensive research activities and knowledge dissemination by being a link between academia and Industry in order to provide absorption capacity to the Industry and to provide technical assistance to all sections of the community, both rural and urban.

The ICT Center of KIST provides the ICT infrastructure of the Institute. The Centre is driven to find solutions and ways to make ICT work for the Institute; support for electronically mediated education; undertake research and development in ICT Training and Education; and develop, test, prototype, and incubate IT infrastructure for the country, in areas such as research and development in application software, networking, database management and administration, Web, and multimedia applications.

KIST works with the world’s leading IT vendors, including Sun, Cisco and Microsoft, among others, to provide educational services at the ICT training center, enabling public and private institutions to become more efficient, effective and competitive in key IT skill areas. The emphasis is now in open source for research and education.

The ICT centre is also involved in CAPACITY BUILDING in a bid to rapidly increase the stock of Rwandan technicians trained to maintain computing hardware, software and networks. Effective application of the information and communications technologies plays a central role in the Government of Rwanda’s Vision 2020. The Centre collaborated with some of its Rwanda partners to provide ICT knowledge transfer to their stakeholders like RPSF, RALGA, and RUPARWA. This is an example of the link between academic & industry to create a knowledge based society in Rwanda.

ICT Technician Training

KIST in collaboration with DFID has launched a program to train Rwandese ICT technicians who are highly needed by both public and private sectors in Rwanda. The purpose of this program, therefore, is to increase the number of technicians in ICT field where the shortage of skilled labors is seemingly to grow fast, and therefore, to address the problems related to this shortage. The major areas that are mostly affected include, among others; the major service sectors or companies like banks or insurance, Ministries, Schools, hospitals, provinces, etc.

It is from this background therefore, that, in ICT Training center, three laboratories were set up, well equipped, with financial assistance from DFID, to train technicians in three modules; Computer Hardware Maintenance, Software Development and Management and Computer Network Design, and Administration to cater for the need in the country. Each laboratory would accommodate the maximum number of twenty students and the training would take four months for full time training, but later the public showed their interest to join the program hence, part time was also started.

The effect training started on 16th September 2002 with a total number of 42 students for full time and 60 students for part time in two modules only, Computer hardware maintenance and Computer network design, and administration. The demand has grown up so that from 180 to 200 students is trained in each module every year. The course focuses on the need to enhance local capacity and maintain the steady by the government of Rwanda to fill the available gap in ICT infrastructure and would also greatly play a crucial role in the poverty reduction campaign.

The programme is aimed at improving current professional skills for labour market demand as well as to underscore filling the existing gaps in ICT intermediate skills. The programme is designed in three modules:

Any person from the Public & Private sector wishing to gain qualifications & technical skills in ICT environment should be at least senior six, basic computer techniques. Knowledge of computer applications is an added advantage.