After 25 years of training and hiring work-ready youth, it’s no surprise to find alumni everywhere. In regions where it operates, DDD supplies the technology industry with skilled professionals. Stories of former alumni bumping into each other abound. What’s becoming clear is that the spread of DDD alumni in technology is more than a flex, a feather in DDD’s cap, or proof of concept; it’s a form of social impact.
“Initially, I had been admitted to pursue a Bachelor of Commerce, but after joining DDD and gaining exposure, my mindset changed,” said alum Stephen Ndele. “I realized that IT had the power to transform lives.” Now Stephen works for a major Kenyan cellular network and refers work to other alumni in the industry. His path to get where he got was turbulent, however, and he hoped DDD could do more to connect alumni to tech and other opportunities.
The needs of the tech workforce are vastly different in Kenya, Cambodia, and Laos. Kenya launched off the blocks earlier with its technology infrastructure. Cambodia has gained on it in the last decade, and Laos is blooming in an early phase. These differences account for variations in DDD’s technology industry footprint.
“We work in very early-stage ecosystems, especially in Cambodia and Laos,” noted DDD CEO Sameer Raina. “For AI, it’s how to train people to build training data sets for AI applications. We could approach the Cambodian government or the Laotian government and say, ‘We can run this program for you in your technical institutions because we have the know-how, we have the skill sets, and we've done this at scale.’”
Recent forays into governmental cooperation in Cambodia add a new dimension to alumni’s potential sector influence. Semi-formal networks create professional pipelines that could be studied to inform DDD’s business model. By tracing how, as one alum put it, “DDD has truly transformed Kenya’s technological landscape,” DDD might identify new business partnerships. Right now leaders and alumni have a general idea of how they’ve infiltrated the tech landscape, but no solid numbers or map.
