Platform steering students to their dream career paths

• Craydel is a platform that seeks to “democratise” higher education by providing students with a variety of courses from universities across the globe.
• It has a personalised career guidance tool and course recommendations from institutions across Africa and the world, which gives learners a variety to choose from.
• The platform has already listed over 100 universities, mostly private and have about 40 on the waiting list in the two months of operations. They are targeting to list at least 1,000 institutions of higher learning by the end of the year.

Manish Sardana is on a mission to help young people study courses they are passionate about and in the process save the country billions of money.

Majority of student transitioning from secondary schools into institutions of higher learning select courses based on influence from family, friends or celebrities.

In other cases, freshmen are allocated programmes by the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) based on high school grades, taking career paths they never dreamt of.

Working with a team of career counsellors and technologists, Mr Sardana has created an online portal for students to apply courses objectively based on their desired career paths and abilities.

Craydel is a platform that seeks to “democratise” higher education by providing students with a variety of courses from universities across the globe.

“In my previous role at WPP Scangroup I got to talk to a lot of people how they made their career choices. A lot of people did not know why they chose a certain path and that's a problem,” says Mr Sardana.

The web-based platform allows working professionals and students to select courses from a large pool of local and international universities. Users are also able to compare the cost of studying their chosen course in various schools.

It has a personalised career guidance tool and course recommendations from institutions across Africa and the world, which gives learners a variety to choose from.

Learners sign up and use the platform for free, but the institutions listed pay the company for the visibility they get from the platform.

The higher education sector in Sub-Saharan Africa is valued at $20 billion, Mr Sardana says. But pursuing the wrong degree and vocational programmes costs the region close to $16 billion.

By establishing students career goals by using psychometric assessments before selecting a course, the entrepreneur and his team believes they are working to solve the $16 billion problem.

"Solutions to unemployment must start at school. The future of this country and the continent lies in the hands of young people and if we can assure great career outcomes from them in the long-term we will prosper,” explains Mr Sardana.

The platform has already listed over 100 universities, mostly private and have about 40 on the waiting list in the two months of operations. They are targeting to list at least 1,000 institutions of higher learning by the end of the year.

The website currently has 700 students who have signed up for their various services, a number they are hopeful would grow given that the idea is still new.

While the concept is not entirely new, Craydel is the first of its kind in Kenya and the entire Sub-Saharan region.

Sardana left Scangroup in 2020 to build Craydel, which has now been operating for six months.

“It was not easy. It takes a lot of courage to give up a job, put all your savings behind this, but I think this is the happiest phase of my life. I feel I am doing something more fulfilling,” says Mr Sardana.

The entrepreneur says he is on a journey to help people make the best career choices and build a platform that will outlive him.

“I was in a very good place in my career. I was a managing director at Scangroup, which is a very large organisation. However, I felt like I am incentivised to build a legacy because money will not leave with you when you die,” he says.

“The only way one can immortilise themselves is if they are able to build a platform that can be used by generations to come.”

The biggest challenge Craydel is currently facing is getting local universities to join the platform. Most of Kenyan universities are hesitant to list their courses on the website.

Mr Sardana thinks that this is something that will soon go away because the idea they are rolling out requires a total behaviour change.

The team is currently working on collaborations with major stakeholders in education sector in their pursuit to secure each student's future.

• The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery estimates that 98 percent of people residing in emerging countries, including Kenya, lack access to multi-specialty surgical services.
• The commission further describes this access to the services as including timeliness, safety, affordability for patients and an adequate capacity by providers.
• This gap forms a good starting point for pursuing the implementation of a multi-specialty growth strategy by clinics and hospitals.

It is an inherent ambition for most healthcare facilities to, over time, increase their scope of services in order to serve a wider catchment population whilst providing a broader array of clinical services.

However, the conundrum that most healthcare managers grapple with is on how, where and what specific activities to pursue in order to actualize this desire in a cost effective and, ultimately, productive manner.

The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery estimates that 98 percent of people residing in emerging countries, including Kenya, lack access to multi-specialty surgical services.

The commission further describes this access to the services as including timeliness, safety, affordability for patients and an adequate capacity by providers. This gap forms a good starting point for pursuing the implementation of a multi-specialty growth strategy by clinics and hospitals.

It is important for healthcare managers to digest available datasets in order to elucidate the characteristics of the disease burden surrounding their health facilities. Such datasets are available both internally and externally.

Internally, records of disease profiles attended to in the facility will be of use; especially of cases that eventually required referral to another center due to non-existence of the needed clinical services.

Externally, the Kenya Health Information System is a freely available online database that contains information on disease burden by type and location in the country. Also, there are specialty-wise medical journal publications that bear extensive information on various disease burdens.

As an example, one may establish that a general outpatient clinic in a hospital setting saw many patients with backaches and of these, the MRIs done showed that most of the patients had spinal compressions but were not definitively attended to due to the unavailability of a neurosurgeon or an orthopedic surgeon specializing on the spine.

The next step would be to consider setting up a spine clinic running on specific days wherein patients presenting with such back problems can be booked into. At this stage, a consideration may be made to invite a visiting specialist doctor to run the clinic on those specified days.

It is worthwhile that during this introductory phase, patients are informed on the need to subscribe to a health insurance scheme so as to limit their need for out-of-pocket expenditure and increase the affordability of such highly-specialized care.

As these occur, the healthcare manager should be forecasting on the supportive services that are required along this specialty line and making plans for the accompanying capital and operational expenditure.

If these cases require surgical interventions, this planning should be around ancillary requirements such as the availability of surgical instruments and implants, staffing cadre, rehabilitative services such as physiotherapy and so on. It helps a great deal to involve input from a specialist in the particular field.

Whereas this example covers a surgical specialty, the same data - driven approach can be applied in all other facets of medical specialties to ensure that an iterative and productive growth approach is undertaken.

The writer is a healthcare leader and geospatial epidemiologist

• The High Court has dismissed a suit filed by minority owner of Bluebird Aviation who accused his partners of siphoning more than $1 billion (Sh108 billion) from the airline through tax evasion, fraud and money laundering.
• Justice Alfred Mabeya brought to an end the five-year court battle pitting Adan Abdi Yussuf against three other owners of the 29-year-old airline.
• The judgment came after the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) cleared three shareholders and executives of Bluebird — Hussein Farah, Unshur Mohamed and Mohamed Abdikadir — from financial malpractices after a nine-month investigation.

The High Court has dismissed a suit filed by minority owner of Bluebird Aviation who accused his partners of siphoning more than $1 billion (Sh108 billion) from the airline through tax evasion, fraud and money laundering.

Justice Alfred Mabeya brought to an end the five-year court battle pitting Adan Abdi Yussuf against three other owners of the 29-year-old airline.

The judgment came after the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) cleared three shareholders and executives of Bluebird — Hussein Farah, Unshur Mohamed and Mohamed Abdikadir — from financial malpractices after a nine-month investigation.

The investigation followed a criminal complaint from Mr Yussuf against his fellow shareholders, accusing them of fraudulently channelling massive funds out of the company as part of a money laundering scheme.

Justice Mabeya dismissed Mr Yusuf’s allegations, saying he failed to prove claims of fraudulent accounting, tax evasion, fraud and money laundering.

“In the present case, all that the plaintiff did was to make sweeping allegations without any backing by way of evidence. He only stated that he had carried out investigations and made discovery of the allegations he made,” said the judge.

“The documents that were produced were not authenticated to prove any of the allegations made against the defendants.”

Mr Yussuf, who claims to own 25 percent of the charter airline, argued that more $1 billion (about Sh108 billion) has been stolen and put in offshore accounts and investments in Western capitals after being transported physically out of the country without declaration. He said the three directors were using the airport passes granted for restricted areas in airports to move the billions.

The DCI dismissed the secret movement of cash at the airports, arguing its investigation and probe by Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) found no evidence of money laundering.

The Financial Reporting Centre through the DCI said it failed to detect breaches while tracking the flow of cash in and outside Blue Bird Aviation.

Mr Yussuf claimed that his partners were stashing proceeds from the airline in international banks under Amazon International FZE. But Justice Mabeya said his partners had sufficiently showed that their relationship with Amazon was purely commercial.

“That the plaintiff had failed to demonstrate the directorship or shareholding of the defendants at Amazon or that they had stolen money from the Company and deposited the same at Amazon’s accounts,” he said.

“No faithful director exercising independent judgment would take any of the said measures, none of which are beneficial to the Company. In fact, all the steps taken by the plaintiff were contrary to the success of the Company. They were meant to sound a death knell on the company,” he added.