Advance Africa, a 2-year programme launched in 2021 in collaboration with Udacity, is designed to provide free training to 20,000 Africans interested in sharpening their digital abilities and gaining mastery. Youths participating in the programme will acquire new skills, complete projects that give answers to current issues, receive badges or nano degrees, and be prepared for the workplace of the future.
“We have identified a scarcity of skilled digital capabilities in Africa. This, coupled with the increased local and international competition for available human resources, has widened this skill gap even further. Hence, with Advance Africa, Access Bank aims to develop the next generation of doers who will challenge the status quo with their tenacity, curiosity, and ever-evolving imagination,” said Daniel Awe, Head of the Africa Fintech Foundry on the purpose of establishing the Advance Africa project.
“Through immersion in various IT/digital courses and first-hand learning from specialists, participants have been able to acquire practical knowledge, abilities, and experiences that will help them build a progressive career in financial technology,” he added.
Advance Africa has thus far impacted individuals in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Rwanda, Guinea, Zambia, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Cameroon, and Congo (DRC), thereby creating a pool of trained resources locally and in every country where Access Bank operates in. At the end of the project, Access Bank aims to retain 400 top performers, thereby helping to reduce unemployment across the continent.
The first two cohorts of the Advance Africa project received over 18,000 and 13,000 applications, respectively, with 5,000 participants selected each. Following the training exercises, a combined 549 individuals earned a foundation Nanodegree, and a further 200 earned an Advanced Nanodegree.
Speaking on the benefits of the training to her development, Cecilia Bassey, one of the beneficiaries of the Advance Africa project, said, “The program was a great opportunity for me to explore and discover my skills. While the training strengthened my analytical talents and time management skills, I also developed grit and resilience during the program. After the second phase ended, I was selected for the next phase, the Internship program with Access Bank. I am privileged to be an intern in the Fintech unit of Access bank, which has widened my knowledge of the tech world. The Advance Africa program has exposed me to opportunities to kickstart a career in Product Design, and I am eager to keep up-skilling and contributing to solving problems.”
Interested participants are encouraged to visit https://www.advance-africa.org to learn more about the program. Applications for Cohort 3 commenced in August 2022, with the training exercise set to start in 2023.