IT expert Fukizi to hold career guidance talk in software development

South Africa-based  Malawian software engineer, solutions architect and consultant  Kenneth Fukizi, with more than 14 years of experience is set to hold a workshop on January 24 in Lilongwe where he shall push forward coding as a tool to reduce unemployment.

And he is also expected to introduce a community of upcoming software developers, which will be used as a platform to build up and equip competent software developers for Malawi and Africa.

He targets youngsters, who want to take up a career in IT or are already in the industry as well as business and corporate leaders and policy makers, who would find this quite enlightening as well.

These business leaders and policy makers are encouraged to attend because he will tackle how he sees IT being used in the future with specific relevance to the African frontier.

He added that people who want to attend can email him to the email [email protected].

He is also expected to launch the second book he has authored that covers a 360 degree viewpoint in terms of skills needed to build a business web application that attracted a UK journalist.

Fukizi said the book is on the latest offering by Microsoft, (ASP.Net Core 3), as a technology framework.

“There are several programming languages that are used to build line of business applications. The most widely known languages in Malawi are PHP, Java and to some extent C# (pronounced see-sharp),” Fukizi said.

“You can produce any web application, desktop application etc by writing your code and running it manually e.g. on Notepad, using for example Microsoft’s C# language.

“But that will be cumbersome. Meaningful applications would take decades to write. Hence there was a need by the language authors to help developers to achieve common functionality much quicker.”

He added that Java has its own frameworks like ‘Spring’, PHP has its own like ‘Laravel’ , and Microsoft had different frameworks but the latest one is ASP.Net Core.

“It presets a few common behaviours that includes safety, performance and stability. Developers world-wide use it to produce web applications, desktop applications,mobile applications, gaming applications, artificial intelligence applications and more.”

He said the book is published and distributed by Packt Publishing, because he did the book as a contract with them and they have their distribution points.

“But currently anyone can buy both the e-book version or the hard copy on Packtpub site and Amazon. Some hard copies are in transit to get to me.

He said the first edition was published in 2017, and was hugely successful world-wide mainly in the USA, Europe, India, Australia, Canada Argentina and there are copies of it in corporate libraries [including] in South Africa.

He said the first edition was coauthored with Jason De Oliveira and Michel Bruchet, who got connected to them by his acquisition editor at Packt Publishing.

The two’s roles were to provide insights and technical guidance on the previous version of the ASP.Net Core 2.

He said through ASP.Net Core, Malawians can develop anything right in Malawi through right training and skill on the framework.

“Malawians can develop their own content management systems instead of wordpress and others, they can develop their own line of business applications, ERPs, CRMs instead of for example using Sage, SAP and other common applications which are primarily developed for different markets outside of Malawi, with different environments.

“Malawians can host their own applications internally, and use ASP.Net Core to produce Malawian-friendly applications, that take into consideration environment factors like network availability, electricity problems, data cost, etc.”

He said he relocated to South Africa for about some 9 years where he

first worked as a freelancer.

But he discovered his software development skills were not up to the standard and decided to join the mainstream development houses which power the industries in South Africa and worldwide.

“I have been writing code on a daily basis for about 7 years now and have worked on applications for different organizations; the ones that people in Malawi will be familiar with include Sanlam, Standard Bank, Old Mutual, Nedbank.

“In most of these roles I have worked as a software development specialist from companies that specialize in software engineering.”

He decided to launch his expertise in Malawi to empower the youth and try and reduce unemployment, under-employment and low rates of technology adoption.

“The book imparts technical knowledge that is modern and in sync with what everyone else is using world-wide. There’s a shortage of programmers in millions across the globe, and being a Malawian I want other Malawians to benefit from the collective effort put into the book.

“I would like in the future to see companies in the USA, Canada, Europe outsource their software development to Malawi, just the same way they are doing to India and South Africa at the moment.

“People in Malawi are qualified and just need that extra guidance. A bulk of developers worldwide actually just have an equivalent of MCSE, and I see potential to get Malawi as a hub where developed countries can in the future use us for software development services, and in turn reducing unemployment, underemployment and bringing in the much needed foreign exchange.

“I see potential in reducing our expenditure to the whole world for technology that is primarily meant for their environments. Most of our software and technology needs can be primarily done from within the country, by Malawians.”

He said IT is at the centre of every other field one can think of and if used properly, it can be the single most important factor for our rapid economic growth.

“We are not utilizing IT to its potential at the moment and I intend to set the ball rolling in provoking a few thoughts into action.

“This is a collective challenge that cannot be carried by or attributed to one person, if we are to make any meaningful strides. Malawi has the people. We can do our part  as citizens to help the country grow.”

Fukizi, who holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree in finance and is currently pursuing a PhD in computer science on a part time basis, worked in Malawi as a lecturer in programming at NACIT before becoming head of IT at Toyota Malawi.

He also worked in the HIV/AIDs industry for their IT needs and started his own company ICT Consult Ltd with which he provided general ICT services to different corporate companies.

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