Dr Evans Ojiambo Onditi is an ABE lecturer at Jaffery Institute in Mombasa, who is responsible for tutoring many successful ABE students including several Top Paper Award winners (the title given to the person who achieves the highest grade worldwide). He completed his ABE studies in 2003 and has now achieved the highest academic accolade of a PhD. Here, he tells us of his love for teaching and shares his story in order to inspire those who are just starting on their ABE journey:
I am the third born in a family of seven. I enjoy watching and playing football as well as travelling to new places. I also love reading marketing books, watching movies and the shark tank episodes as well as documentaries on successful new product development and marketing strategies in local and global markets.
Jaffery Institute of Professional Studies in Mombasa, Kenya is an institution of higher learning offering post-secondary school courses examined by ABE, ACCA and the computer literacy program by ICDL. It has consistently produced top paper award winners in both ACCA and ABE examinations. The college was established in the year 2001 and it celebrated its 20th anniversary this year.
I work as a lecturer teaching ABE Business Management subjects at Levels 4, 5 and 6. My modules include Employability and Self-Development, Dynamic Business Environments, Enterprising Organisations, Managing Stakeholder Relationships among other units. My role involves the preparation of teaching and learning materials, doing presentations in the lecture rooms and setting and marking student assignments and continuous assessment tests to evaluate the learning of my students. I also guide students who do assignments units. This role requires a lot of responsibility, a keen eye for details, good planning and time management skills.
What excites me most in my role as Lecturer, is the fact that I meet new students every semester who are eager to learn from me. Knowing that my effect on these students will last for a lifetime is deeply satisfying. Walking into a lecture room full of students who are just ready and eager to listen and learn from me as I share my knowledge is very enjoyable. This job gives me the opportunity to shape the future of my students for the better either as future entrepreneurs who will become job creators or as reliable and competent employees.
After completing the ABE Advanced Diploma in which I was able to achieve the top paper worldwide in Managing Systems Change in December 2003, I joined Moi University here in Kenya to pursue a Bachelors degree in Business Management. That is where the class presentations I used to do for my group brought out my ability to present in front of large audiences. During these class presentations, one of my lecturers suggested that I had what it takes to be a great lecturer in future. It turns out that his words were prophetic.
After my graduation in 2008, I joined a motor vehicle assembly firm in Nairobi as a marketing executive where I worked till the year 2010. In the year 2011, I was offered an opportunity to join a university as a graduate assistant to teach marketing on a part-time basis for evening and weekend classes. I had to relocate to Mombasa as a result and this is how I joined the teaching fraternity. I have been teaching since 2011. As an alumnus of ABE, I was able to join the Jaffery Institute of Professional Studies as a lecturer to teach the Business Management course units. I am proud to say that during my time here, I have received recognition from ABE for having provided a high standard of tuition that supported the achievement of 4 top paper awards for my students.
The ABE Advanced Diploma enabled me to get university admission with exemptions from units I had already done. The experience I had with ABE as a student enabled me to perform better in my university assignments and continuous assessment tests because my academic writing was much better than those of students who had joined the university straight from high school. This gave me an advantage and contributed a lot to my graduating with a second class honours, upper-division Business Management degree. I later enrolled for my Masters degree in Business Administration which I completed and graduated in 2014. I then enrolled for a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Business Administration (Marketing) at the University of Nairobi in 2015 and I was able to graduate on 24th September 2021. Looking back, I can confidently say that the experience I had with ABE established a solid academic foundation that enabled me to progress successfully through university and I performed better because of this.
Patience and hard work are required to succeed at all levels of ABE programs. Those who may not have qualified for direct university entry should never despair since ABE provides a quick and cost-effective route and most importantly they get a highly recognised global qualification in their respective countries which equips them with relevant knowledge and skills to work in a global environment. I hope my story will inspire current and future ABE students to believe and realise that it is possible to rise from humble academic beginnings to the highest possible level of their academic journey.