First the good news for those young Kenyans who have qualifications for the hospitality sector, but have been unable to find work, despite the number of “tourist-class” hotels in Kenya growing consistently every year:
In case you have not already heard this, please know that the only thing standing between you and a job in your specialty within the hospitality sector in Germany, is that you invest in yourself and study to obtain certified competence in the German language.
And despite the much higher cost of living in Germany, you will still find that you earn enough there to join in the already massive “diaspora remittances” flood of Euros and Dollars, which Kenyans working overseas send back either to help support their families, or to invest with an eye on their future return back home.
More good news: it is not only Germany that needs such qualified hospitality workers, fluent in the German language.
Austria, a small but very prosperous state in the very heart of Europe (i e, in Central Europe) also has German as its official language, and also needs more hospitality workers for its many hotels and restaurants.
Austria hosts up to 30 million international visitors annually yet has a population of just nine million people.
More good news: If you are a young Kenyan still trying to figure out in which institution you should embark on your journey towards a career in the hospitality sector, then you should know that the Ronald Ngala Utalii College in Kilifi county, should be admitting its first batch of hospitality students any day now.
And if this college – which is essentially a beach resort, designed to serve as a hotel school – will be at all like other public institutions of higher learning, you will find that it is significantly cheaper to undertake your studies there, than in a privately owned college offering the same hospitality courses.
But there is something about this Ronald Ngala Utalii College which has to be borne in mind when trying to figure out how nations prosper, or don’t: It has now taken no less than 14 years to get this college to an estimated 85 per cent completion.
Whereas it generally takes just about two years for Kenya’s private sector investors in the tourism sector to put up a new three-star beach resort from scratch, if all the paperwork is in order.
There are three points to note here:
First is that it is only through the vastly improved infrastructure of the Kenya coast, from the expansion of Moi International Airport in Mombasa to the complex of roads and bridges which have made travel to and from the North Coast easy (all the way to Kilifi , Malindi and beyond) that tourism in Kilifi county has flourished.
And such infrastructure was not put up by the private sector, but by the government, mostly in collaboration with the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
So whereas the government in this case, revealed a disgraceful level of incompetence when it came to the building of a three-star hotel (though some say it is actually five-star), the many tourist establishments in the region could only flourish after the government had set up the infrastructure necessary for supporting a long chain of beach resorts that stretch all the way from Mombasa to Malindi.
And that, as far as I can tell, is one of the key determinants of national prosperity.
Tourism is the only sector that Kenya has successfully initiated and expanded post-independence.
The agrarian sector is an inheritance of the colonial era.
Tourism has created over a million jobs directly and indirectly, and the sector has been successful to the point of producing a surplus of skilled hospitality staff , many of whom are now out to seek employment opportunities overseas.
The sector is also supported by key institutions like the Tourism Fund; the Kenya Tourism Board; the Kenya Tourism Federation; the Tourism Regulatory Authority; etc.
It is this combination of the government undertaking
the development of key infrastructure; the existence
of various statutory institutions; and the active
participation of private-sector-led stakeholder groups,
which provide a benchmark for emerging economic
sectors.
