Global ICT solutions provider, IBM is ramping up its
digital-skills training program to accommodate as many as 25 million Africans
in the next five years, looking toward building a future workforce on the
continent.
The U.S. tech giant plans to make an initial
investment of $70 million to roll out the training initiative in South Africa,
a country where 31 percent of people between 15 and 24 are unemployed,
according to Statistics South Africa. Other countries set to benefit in this
program include Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco and Egypt, enabling the expansion of
the project across the continent.
“Africa will have the largest workforce by 2040 and
IBM wants to lay the foundation blocks to build a digital workforce,’’ Juan
Pablo Napoli, head of IBM Skills Academy, said by phone from Dubai. “We will be
providing a free cloud-based learning platform able to train people from basic
computer skills to high-end app development.”
The move may help bring and keep digital jobs in
Africa instead of losing them to India, said Hamilton Ratshefola, IBM’s country
manager for South Africa. As many as 50,000 such jobs are currently farmed out
from Africa, predominantly to India, Ratshefola said. “If the program is
implemented successfully over the five-year period all these jobs can be moved
to Africa, where people will be equipped with the right set of skills,” he
said.
Mr. Dipo Falkner, country general manager, IBM West
Africa, also disclosed that the company would be training five million
Nigerians over the next two years on information and communications technology
skills required to enhance the small and medium enterprises (SME) business
entrepreneurs.
He made this known during the Nigeria International
Technology Exhibition and Conference (NITEC 2017) held in Lagos last week.
According to him, plans have been made to start up the programme tagged
“Digital Nations Africa” in the last quarter of 2017.
In addition, he disclosed that another mandate of
IBM is to help in improving the skill level of technology in Nigeria by
training and partnering with Nigerian Universities. “We partner with Nigerian
universities. It’s an ongoing exercise whereby we make available a set of solutions to the universities and both the
university students and their faculties can get trained and certified on these
solutions”, he said.
The company has partnered with the United Nations in
extending the initiative throughout Africa. IBM is also talking to a number of
other potential partners, including mobile-phone companies, to further scale
the program, Ratshefola said. In South Africa, IBM already is working with
phone carrier Vodacom Group Ltd., he said.
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