Did you know that by 2030, the working age population in Africa will increase to over 600 million? That means that every year for the next three decades, 15 to 20 million educated young adults will be entering the workforce.
FACT: The number one constraint to business expansion that a majority of African employers cite is inadequately skilled workforces.
We’ve already talked about the legions of clueless graduates who enter the modern digital landscape to the sound of closing doors. Today we’re saying what we plan to do about it.
The idea of adopting technology and equipping oneself with necessary skills is not new. You saw it coming the moment Amazon, Uber, AirBnB and Alibaba took over their industries, or when duopoly giants Google and Facebook dominated the global digital market. In the world of ICT, the greatest long-term benefits will be found in digital designers, creators and makers. Africa’s educators should be scrambling to design curricula that accelerate skills to match the wave of the future.
Can you really afford to be unprepared?
Francis Waithaka, co-founder of Digital For Africa and an IT practitioner for 17 years, has seen the changing times and has been preparing others for a long time. He has trained young people at ADMI, entrepreneurs at Centonomy, and bankers at KCB since 2012, going as far as Burundi, Tanzania, South Sudan and Rwanda. He now partners with the Kenya Bankers Association (KBA) to facilitate innovation in the digital banking space. InukaSME is one of the soon-to-be-launched products of this partnership: a platform that will train entrepreneurs to apply technology to the world of business.
Do you know how to turn e-commerce into a lucrative avenue for your business?
By learning about digital tools and assets, SMEs come to understand the value and application of these systems. Digital For Africa currently offers Masterclasses in Media Buying, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Digital Strategy and Planning, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and more. After training, they also provide a free one-month mentorship to make sure their students gain full advantage from their new systems.
They also partnered with ProsperWorks, a CRM that is certified and used by Google, to bring their assets into the African space. Teaming up with global partners such as Google and Facebook is also on the to-do list. With the support from such partnerships, Digital For Africa plans to expedite the process of bringing technology and digital skills to every part of Africa.
There are many mountains to scale, and one particular looms bright and formidable: train one million entrepreneurs, in Africa, in digital marketing skills by the year 2023.
Do you think it is possible?
The road to one million is a long one, but Digital For Africa is taking it one step at a time. Join the revolution!
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Our writer, Barbara Jebet, is a content strategist and a brand storyteller. Check out her blog: the slightly curious world of story pot.
