DevFest season: Kenya's developers and the AI skills gap

October and November are DevFest season for Kenya's developer communities. Google Developer Groups in different towns run one-day festivals of talks, workshops and networking. This year's calendar includes DevFest Rift Valley in Eldoret on 24 October and DevFest Kisii on 31 October, whose theme is "Innovating Responsibility: AI & Ethical Development". DevFest Nairobi is reported to be planned for November.

AI dominates the agendas, as it does almost everywhere developers gather. That is encouraging. It also raises a question worth asking in every session: how do these skills reach the businesses that need them?

Two skills gaps, not one

Discussions of the "AI skills gap" usually mean a shortage of engineers who can build AI systems. Kenya does need more of them. But there is a second gap that is larger and less discussed: the gap between what AI tools can do and what ordinary businesses know how to do with them.

A salon owner in Kisii, a hardware shop in Eldoret or a school in Kitale does not need to train a model. They need someone to show them how to use AI to write a better product description, make an ad, answer customers faster or understand their sales.

Where developers can help

• Build for local problems: payments, logistics, agriculture, health, education, in local languages
• Teach users, not just developers: workshops for small businesses, teachers and county staff
• Build responsibly: Kisii's theme is a good one. Consent, fairness, privacy and honesty are engineering decisions, not afterthoughts
• Share what works: open-source tools, datasets in African languages, tutorials

Hackathons as a pipeline

Hackathons are another route into the industry. This month, four Kenyan women won the GirlCode Kenya hackathon at Konza Technopolis with Naulisako, a digital fare-collection platform for public transport. Hackathons as Kenya's talent pipeline.

Talent in a time of change

DevFest season arrives in a turbulent month: Microsoft told staff of proposed changes at its Nairobi engineering centre. What it means. Community events like DevFest are part of the ecosystem's resilience: places where engineers meet employers, co-founders and collaborators.

Our part

We build Tari Studio in Kenya: an AI tool that lets businesses make image and video ads in plain words, in Kiswahili, English as Kenyans speak it and other languages. It is our attempt to close the second skills gap, by making AI usable for people who will never write a line of code.

A challenge for attendees

If you attend a DevFest this season, here is a small challenge. Pick one local business near you, a salon, a shop or a clinic, and show its owner one AI tool that saves them time. Or write one tutorial in Kiswahili. Or contribute to one open dataset in a Kenyan language. Small acts of teaching are how a skills gap closes.

If you are a developer attending DevFest this year, we hope you will think about both gaps. The first creates jobs for engineers. The second creates value across the whole economy.