African leaders have been asked to pay more attention to digital skills education in 2023 so that they can train the kind of workers who will help the continent grow.
Osita Oparaugo, founder and CEO of GetBundi, said this recently while talking to journalists in Lagos. He said that Africa’s economic growth would be slowed down if there weren’t enough workers with digital skills.
In the twenty-first century, he claimed, everyone must get digital skills, particularly in Africa.
The founder of GetBundi backed up this claim with a study from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is part of the World Bank Group. The study showed that by 2030, 230 million jobs in Africa would require some level of digital skills, which could create 650 million training opportunities and a market worth an estimated $130 billion.
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According to him, IFC and the World Bank (via the Digital Development Program Trust Fund) found that by 2030, 50–55 percent of occupations in Kenya, 35–45 percent in Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Rwanda, and 20–25 percent in Mozambique would require some level of digital skills.
In the modern world, only STEM– and digital-skilled nations can develop.
African digital skill development
Oparaugo pointed out Singapore and China, whose economies are doing well now because of how important scientific and technological progress has been. He said that what China and Singapore have done in less than 50 years, Africa can also do with STEM education and STI skills. This is especially true when you think about how many people there are in Africa and how strong they are, especially the young people.
GetBundi, an educational technology platform that offers high-quality, interesting, and easy-to-access STEM courses and STI skills, was created in June 2022 in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial city, to help people all over Africa learn digital skills.
According to studies by the World Bank, UNESCO, and others, using a language of instruction that is close to the people matters a lot, especially for learning foundational skills. Recently, in December 2022, we decided to run some of our GetBundi digital skills courses in Pidgin English to make them more accessible to more Africans.
He said that the goal of the edtch platform is to improve the skills of 10 million Africans through its STEM and digital skills centers by 2032 and beyond, so that everyone can benefit from a technology-driven, sustainable development.