Kenyan nurses can’t get UK jobs because of their poor English

Kenyan nurses’ fate a lesson for international job seekers

By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor

Hundreds of nurses in Kenya, who are unemployed at home, cannot get jobs in the United Kingdom because they speak and write poor English even though it is one of their country’s official languages.

Kenyan Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe confirmed that only 10 out of 300 health workers who applied for the jobs with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) passed the examinations.

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It is a stark lesson for anyone from any region of the world to prepare fully for international jobs as the global economy now dictates. English is the most widely spoken language in the world, followed by French.

School curriculums across the European Union (EU) compel students to study at least one international language – generally English or French or Spanish, or any other foreign language – to equip them for life outside their home countries.

Other countries in both the global North (Japan, Russia, Switzerland, Canada, et cetera) and the global South (India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Brazil, et cetera) also emphasise the need for students to study at least one foreign language.

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Advantage English

Even in China, a country with its own Mandarin language dating back centuries, millions out of its over one billion citizens learn English to connect with a global village now facilitated by the internet.

English is not an official language in China.

But it is in Kenya, where English and Swahili are the main languages of instruction in universities and technical institutions.

But these Kenyan nurses failed to appreciate the importance of English in school and in day to day communication, preferring to overstress their local Swahili – but that language is not getting them jobs at home or overseas.

Kenya signed a deal with the UK in July that would allow its unemployed nurses and other medics to work in the UK. The scheme is open to Kenyan health workers who are qualified but unemployed, the BBC reports.

However, dozens of Kenyan health workers failed English language tests that would have helped them get opportunities to work in the NHS.

Currently there are almost 900 Kenyans working in the NHS in various capacities, according to the British authorities.

Impact of English

In contrast to Kenyans, Indians have leveraged their professional skills with their ability to speak English to get jobs in countries such as the UK, Canada, the United States, and Australia.

There is a high number of Indian doctors in the UK. Indians dominate the tech space in the US, highlighted by the profile of Sundar Pichai, an Indian immigrant who rose to become Google Chief Executive Officer in 2015.

Nigerians are also doing well overseas. They have professional qualifications and they speak English, their language of instruction from primary school to university.

Nigerian expatriates are in high demand, even in Saudia Arabia where Arabic is the official language. Saudis also speak English and Riyadh eagerly employs Nigerian doctors because of their competence.

In August, Saudi officials recruited many Nigerian doctors in Abuja and Lagos for the Saudi Health Ministry, the second such exercise in three years from 2018.

There are thousands of other Nigerian doctors and nurses, trained locally or abroad, who work in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.

Diaspora Nigerians are also in other fields, including tech, finance, and academia.

Nigerians constitute most educated group in US

Nigerians are the most educated residents of America, with 59 per cent of them aged 25 years and older having at least a bachelor’s degree.

In the second place are South Koreans (56 percent); third, Chinese (51 per cent); followed by the British (50 per cent), and Germans (38 per cent).

Only 33 of White American citizens have first degrees, according to Migration Policy Institute tabulation of American Community Survey (ACS) data of US Census Bureau.

“Indeed, we have almost 14,000 Nigerians studying in America [by July 2021] and this is not by accident. This is because Nigerians and Nigerian families believe in strong education.

“They push their kids to strong education. American universities offer world class education,” said Stephen Ibelli, US Consulate Public Affairs Officer in Lagos.

The analysis by the ACS buttresses report by the World Bank that Nigerians in the diaspora belong to the most educated immigrant group representing every professional field.

There are an estimated 15 million Nigerians in all parts of the world, and according to the World Bank, the average of them holds at least a bachelor’s degree with an annual median income of about $65,000.

UK employs 353 Nigerian doctors in 3 months

At least 353 Nigerian doctors were registered to work in the UK in the 100 days between June 10 and September 20, according to the website of the British General Medical Council (BGMC), reported by The PUNCH.

Between July 24 and September 21 about 862 of them were licensed in the UK despite the pandemic. Overall, 8,737 doctors who obtained their degrees in Nigeria currently practise in the UK.

The figure is apart from the number of Nigerian doctors who were trained in the UK and are practising there, said Miranda Newey, BGMC Senior Medical Officer, who disclosed this to The PUNCH.

BGMC licenses and maintains the register of medical practitioners in the UK and Newey said the increase in the number of doctors migrating from Nigeria and other countries has led to the opening of a bigger clinical examination centre.

She said: “The data released to you contains the total of Nigeria trained doctors who gained their primary medical qualifications from medical schools in Nigeria. This is excluding Nigerians trained in the UK.

“The spike in doctors’ migration made us to open a bigger clinical assessment centre to enable us to test more doctors wanting to work in the UK.

“Despite being forced to close during the pandemic, there has been a lot of demand for test placements from people coming in from Nigeria.”

BGMC data shows that 4,528 medical doctors trained in Nigeria passed the examination to practise and were employed in the UK between 2015 and July 2021, broken down as follows: