My brief thoughts on this.

1. Nairobits is doing fantastic work.

2. Simon - you meant primary not tertiary right? Formal letter writing is a skill that should be taught in primary school not at tertiary level. Perhaps I am displaying my age here but I remember having to demonstrate the ability to write a formal letter as part of the internal ENTRANCE tests to secondary school. At the very least by the first year of high school you should know the format and structure of a formal letter. 

3. Many people on this list work to raise standards in our country. One reason I find Skunkworks valuable is because it is full of patriots of one sort or the other. To assume that we demand certain standards because we do not understand the challenges many Kenyans go through every day is ridiculous and petty. It is because we know the challenges AND we know what the marketplace and indeed what LIFE will demand that we are determined to raise the standards across the board. Asking us to lower standards because of this or that is doing a disservice not only to those looking to employ but also to those who are seeking employment.

4. You need to know how to communicate effectively to get ahead and to seize the opportunities that come your way in life. You can rant all you want, you can request to be removed from any number of email lists, you can assume that people do not understand where you are coming from or what challenges you face but at the end of day you need to be able to communicate effectively. Formal writing is a skill that is essential not only in getting a job, but staying in a job. Not only in starting a company but growing the company. 

5. As Crystal says, this is growing problem across many sectors of society. Remember a good covering letter and well formatted and presented CV used to be the STARTING point of a successful application. Now days these are slowly becoming the determining factor of an application. We think "well at least this guy can write a letter". Remember not even 10 years ago when we would be told what font, what font size, what size margins, what length an application should be submitted in? Forget that we did not even have computers with word processors at home - but we found a way to get to a machine with a word processor and submitted the applications to the exact specifications. Most of these applications were unsuccessful but hey you kept pressing on. So we are NOT asking these applicants to do anything we did not do ourselves. Perhaps Rahim can share with us the hoops he had to jump through to become an official Apple Reseller. 

Sawa - wacha I end there!