Developing Africa’s next generation of a digitally-enabled workforce is the dream that the Office of Career Services shares with the African Development Bank, Microsoft, Rockerfeller Foundation and Google. This is being achieved through “The Jobs for Youth Africa (JfYA) Coding for Employment flagship program” aimed at developing and launching Africa’s next generation of digitally enabled youthful workforce.

The Office of Career Services launched the Training of Trainers for the Coding for Employment program on Monday, July 1 and the training runs till Friday, July 5, 2019. The program will: 1) equip 130 centers of excellence with ICT infrastructure, 2) train young people in demand driven ICT skills and entrepreneurship and 3) provide graduates with linkages to the ICT ecosystem for internships and job opportunities. Specifically, each center of excellence is expected to train at least 1,800 young people which will contribute to the wider program objective of training 234,000 youth and creating 9 million jobs over the next decade. Five (5) countries have been identified to pilot the program namely Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria, Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire. In each country, a maximum of five innovation centers of excellence will be hosted in partner institutions.

Through demand-driven training, the program will equip youth across the continent with the skills needed to secure ICT, ICT-enabled and ICT services employment. The program will provide both technical, and entrepreneurship skills that are transferable across sectors. The beneficiaries of this program will be youth aged between 15 and 35 years who are currently unemployed or underemployed with particular consideration given to vulnerable and disadvantaged youth. The program will strategically position them to compete for the jobs of the “present” and the “future”. Beyond skills development, the program seeks to drive the creation of an “innovation ecosystem” where key stakeholders (private sectors, youth, and government) in the sector can adopt a sustainable, integrated and holistic approach focused on promoting the innovative use of digital tools to solve social problems in Africa. As such the program will support the development of 130 innovation centers of excellence which will provide a platform to host best practices, private sector linkages and support training programs.

The Office of Career Services is focusing on developing the digital skills of its students to enable them competitively secure an employment opportunity or become their own bosses.