MTN established the MTN Skills Academy with the goal of empowering individuals all throughout Africa to become producers, consumers, and innovators of digital technology.
The African Union’s “Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa” as well as MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategic intent of leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress are both aligned with the launch of the Academy, which took place on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress Africa in Kigali, Rwanda.
“We aim to create solutions that enhance opportunities and tackle some of the challenges that Africa faces,” said Nompilo Morafo, Chief Sustainability & Corporate Affairs Officer for the MTN Group. “We are committed to making Africa a better place.” The most significant of them is unemployment, which is made worse by poor levels of digital literacy as well as access and skills. Our “Digital Skills for Digital Jobs” program will strengthen the connection between the training of digital skills and the demand for jobs in the digital sector. The MTN Skills Academy will function as a resource that is available to everyone.
Read also: Smart Africa opens the first Digital Skills Academy in Côte d’Ivoire
“This initiative nicely complements the programs we are rolling out at country and continent level and enhances the ecosystem,” said Paula Ingabire, Rwanda’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology and Innovation. “This initiative,” she said. “We are particularly glad to have the means to get to hard-to-reach regions by getting devices into people’s hands so that they may participate in the project and obtain the essential skills to be employable,” said the CEO of the company.
There are around 200 million young people living in sub-Saharan Africa, and approximately 38 million of them are not participating in any education, employment, or training. According to the International Labor Organization, this number is increasing, and the likelihood that young women will be affected is more than twice as high as that of young males. According to the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, by the year 2025, at least a minimal level of competency in sustainable digital skills must be had by sixty per cent of the world’s children and adults.
More on the Skills Academy
The MTN Skills Academy, in collaboration with numerous partners from the public and private sectors, focuses on the following areas: the development of digital solutions to make career guidance available to all young people; the provision of access to free online training for digital and financial skills; the promotion of work-readiness in order to improve employment opportunities; the establishment of a public and private sector-wide job hub in order to enhance job placement opportunities across the continent.
Its features include low data use, zero-rating in select markets, country-specific and language functionality, and features that enable its use by persons with varying degrees of physical ability. These features were designed with the intention of making the product accessible to as many people as possible. It does this by capitalizing on the capabilities of its partners, such as the PACE Career Centre (which offers all-encompassing career assistance) and the online learning provider Coursera (which provides basic, intermediate and advanced technology and business skills training).
“MTN envisions a thriving Africa, one in which people everywhere enjoy the advantages of a contemporary, connected lifestyle. Our efforts are intrinsically bound up with the prosperity of the neighborhoods that we look after. According to Morafo, “with the MTN Skills Academy, people in Africa will be able to train for emerging vocations at a speed and scale that has never been seen before, which will greatly contribute to resolving the difficulties that the continent has with regard to unemployment.”