NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, February 9, 2017

International Business Machines Corp. is ramping up its digital-skills training program to accommodate as many as 25 million Africans in the next five years, looking toward building a future workforce on the continent.

The U.S. tech giant plans to make an initial investment of 945 million rand ($70 million) to roll out the training initiative in South Africa, a country where 31 percent of people between 15 and 24 are unemployed, according toStatistics South Africa. Other countries set to benefit in this program include Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco and Egypt, enabling the expansion of the project across the continent.

“Africa will have the largest workforce by 2040 and IBM wants to lay the foundation blocks to build a digital workforce,’’ Juan Pablo Napoli, head of IBM Skills Academy, said by phone from Dubai. “We will be providing a free cloud-based learning platform able to train people from basic computer skills to high-end app development.”