The Participants
OpenLabs Ghana, formerly NIIT, has launched an initiative to empower the youth in technology programmes.
The Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) will pre-finance the training of 20 young graduates in technology programs, place them in gainful employment, and enable them to pay back the cost of training in installments, later.
In addition, 10 ladies will receive free Data Science training as well as job placements.
The initiative forms part of OpenLabs’ effort to assist the government in addressing the country’s youth unemployment problem, and help bridge the gender gap in the technology space.
According to the European Commission tech skills are highly required in securing employment with 90 per cent of jobs today requiring a certain level of digital skills.
However, women are lagging far behind, with only 17.5 per cent of representation in the tech workforce worldwide.
A release by OpenLabs said the initiative started with the conduct of surveys and talks with a variety of job providers and consultants to determine the most in-demand IT skills that can be filled instantly.
“Following that, the technical team created the curriculum, and the partnership and collaboration team began looking for organizations that could assist us in our efforts.
Fast forward six months, and we had our BluePrint and the partners in place to properly conduct this programme. Thanks to agencies such as Brighter Investment, CodeLn, Jobberman, and IETP for their significant contributions to this programme,” it said.
It explained that the six months training will expose beneficiaries to world-class technology and highly qualified professionals in the tech industry.
Beneficiaries will also have total access to these technologies for learning with keen guidance from a team of experts.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri