IBM will invest $60 million over three years to expand Africa Technical Academy and the company’s Africa University Program to over 20 African countries.
Free training in advanced skills in analytics, cloud and big data technologies will be some of the focus areas.
IBM is associating with Kenya Education Network (KENET) to deliver hands-on certification courses to faculty and students of 50 Kenyan universities over KENET’s broadband network to develop and enhance job market readiness among university students.
“With a research laboratory, innovation centers, offices and other advanced facilities in more than 24 African countries, IBM has the highest concentration of technical talent on the African continent,” said Naguib Attia, IBM Chief Technology Officer & VP Technical Leadership MEA.
As per the IBM Africa University Programme, 80 Universities currently participate to enhance their curriculum. These universities provide their final year students with the range of business analytics, cybersecurity, data management, cloud and mobile technology training via the technical role based model applied in the IBM Technical Academy.
“When the training is offered in more than 80 Universities across Africa, we will be able to reach and offer certification to over one thousand faculty members and more than 35,000 students by 2017,” added IBM’s Attia.
IBM Africa Technical Academy trained 1600 technical professionals so far, each in a specialist role with two primary technologies. To expand the impact of the programme, additional specialist roles will be added to the curriculum and the training opportunities will be stepped up to be offered quarterly, as well as extended to 12 countries by the end of 2015.
