African skills initiative receives USD 60 mln investment

IBM has invested a sum of USD 60 million over three years to develop the next generation of technical talent in Africa. As part of the initiative, IBM is expanding the Africa Technical Academy and the company’s Africa University Programme to over 20 African countries.

IBM said IT professionals across the continent are set to benefit with advanced skills in analytics, cloud and big data technologies which are crucial to the next phase of Africa’s economic and social development.

In Kenya – home to IBM’s Africa Research lab and a state-of-the-art Innovation Center – IBM is partnering with the Kenya Education Network (KENET) to deliver advanced hands-on certification courses to faculty and students of 50 Kenyan universities over KENET’s broadband network. The certification courses will develop and enhance job market readiness among university students by providing the technical expertise that both employers and entrepreneurs require in order to succeed in a fast paced growth market like Kenya. The courses are available at no cost and are facilitated by both IBM online trainers and certified faculty in the participating universities.

IBM Technical Academy runs in parallel with IBM Africa University Programme, in which 80 Universities across the continent currently participate to enhance their curriculum. These universities provide their final year students with a range of business analytics, cyber security, data management, cloud and mobile technology training via the technical role based model applied in the IBM Technical Academy. Academic staff and students are supported by IBM’s team of experts, cloud-based resources and an IBM training and information portal.

Course are currently delivered in English. This will soon expand to French and later include other African languages.