Education for young people: IBM announces an initiative in Africa

AFRICA – Education for young people is a critically important issue. The US computer giant IBM has announced the launch of the initiative “IBM Digital – Nation Africa” which provides for the investment of approximately 70 million dollars in the vocational training of millions of young people – the company envisages 25 million within the next five years in the ICT sector.

The project aims to raise the level of knowledge and expertise in the subject to enable young African people to find work in the sector, at all levels, and as a result become the future engines of development on the continent in a time when new technologies are prevalent in all sectors of the economy.

The initiative will be based on the IBM Bluemix cloud platform which integrates infrastructure and platform services with cognitive and analytic solutions in a single environment to quickly turn ideas into products and services, creating innovation with speed, flexibility and an enterprise-level performance.
IBM’s goal is to focus on a new type of job role, known as “New Collar” jobs, which does not require a university degree. These jobs are involved in the field of cyber-security, data, artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

The initiative is backed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) which has a focus on supporting development driven by ICT in Africa and the Middle East. The programme will be launched by IBM’s regional offices in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco and Egypt, and will later expand to the rest of the continent.

Source: www.infoafrica.it