Google and partner Livity Africa have revealed a programme to train a million young Africans in digital skills in the next 12 months.
The companies intend to provide training to 900 000 people through a Web portal, with a further 100 000 being taken through an “offline”, face-to-face training programme.
Two training programmes have been announced. The first, Digify Bytes, will offer digital skills to youngsters looking to develop a digital career; the second, Digify Pro, will provide a three-month “immersion programme” for digital specialists.
The focus of the two programmes initially is on Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.
A group of 65 volunteer Google employees from around the world are helping the Livity team with content development, training the trainers and, in some cases, delivering the training sessions.
Google has also announced the launch of digifyafrica.com, an online learning portal that will house a range of digital skills courses, available to anyone in Africa — free of charge.
The courses are designed to be as “light” as possible so they don’t eat up valuable data, Google said.
There are nine training courses already available and Google aims to have 50 available by July.
“We are committing to training a million people across Africa in the next 12 months, equipping them with digital skills to manage their own online profiles, develop their professional personas and potentially starting their own businesses,” said Google South Africa director Luke Mckend. — (c) 2016 NewsCentral Media