Safaricom in youth workplace digital skills training deal

Safaricom Foundation and digital workforce firm CloudFactory have partnered in a learning initiative designed to expand digital skills of young people in the country.

The programme will give the youth foundational digital skills needed to enter today’s high-tech workplaces.

“As the workplace continues to evolve, becoming more digital and technology-driven in nature, it’s critical for young men and women to develop and hone those foundational skills,” Sanda Ojiambo, the head of corporate responsibility at Safaricom Foundation said in a statement.

“CloudFactory and Safaricom Foundation will help young people in Kenya build important digital aptitudes and experience, setting them up to be successful as they seek out jobs and begin to enter a competitive global job market.”

Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are becoming more prevalent and embedded in today’s digital economy.

Helping students build the skills necessary to work with and alongside these types of cutting-edge technologies, the partners are offering a two-week training session for students.

The focus is on those aged 18 to 25 years.

The skills to be taught range from typing, spreadsheet expertise, and web research to enriched skills such as data processing and image annotation that underpin the fundamentals of AI and ML.

This is part of CloudFactory’s goal of training over 2,000 young people in the region with work-ready digital skills by 2021.

“By advancing our mission in the region, we are extending our investment in the people of Kenya — providing meaningful work opportunities that uniquely align with the needs of the tech-forward companies we work with around the world.” said Mark Sears, founder and CEO, CloudFactory.