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Skilling the Youth of Africa

Recently I saw that the Gauteng Department of Education has opened 2 new schools focused on creating a skilled labour force in respond to the challenge of fixing digital skills gap in key sectors. These schools offer maths, science and ICT; engineering; commerce and entrepreneurship; sports and performing and creative arts.

There are many programmes around designed to help young people enter the market. What surprises me is that trying to find a central database of educational programmes in Africa is a real challenge. So as a very modest contribution to this task – and in the hopes that a reader might have details to share – we are carrying a few examples in the Newsletter over the next few months.

This month’s example – The Next Economy programme, which is funded by the Netherlands and supported by Afrilabs and other educational NGOs,  aims to empower young people and stimulate them to create their own future jobs. It is a skills acquisition and training programme for 18-35 year olds, driven by the needs of the youth and based on their ideas, visions and plans to make a difference in their own lives and those of others. The Next Economy offers 3 different programmes: Make it Work, Get Started and Build your Business, and is available at present in Nigeria, Kenya, Mali, Somalia and Somaliland.

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Shahrain Coovadia

Shahrain Coovadia is a Cyber Security Consultant at Deloitte, South Africa. Prior to joining Deloitte she started a web-design studio, and worked at the University of Cape Town as a teaching facilitator. Shahrain graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Bachelor of Commerce Honours specialising in Information Systems. She currently facilitates web & database management for Ecommerce Forum South Africa (EFSA).

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