GE Africa Digital Skills Initiatives: Rising to the challenge of building a world that works with the Africa industrial internet programme

Earlier this year, GE Africa and the Africa Leadership University announced the kick-off of the 3rd cohort of the Africa Industrial Internet Programme (AIIP) which is aimed at equipping young Africans with skills that will enable them to take part in the fourth industrial revolution. The 2020 cohort has enrolled 35 students from 8 countries across Africa, drawn from Oil & gas, transportation, power, energy, manufacturing, healthcare, telecoms and aviation industries.

Launched in 2018, the programme has empowered participants with essential skills for building applications for the Industrial Internet, which enables machine-to-machine communication that results in systems that can collect, analyse, and deliver data in real-time. Over the last two years, the rigorous training programme has graduated 64 students, of which 50 were fully sponsored by GE from a scholarship fund totalling US$500,000.

“African Leadership Group is thrilled to be partnering with GE to build a new generation of digital leaders for Africa. We share GE’s passion for data, and what it can bring to the African continent and the world. The Programme enables mid-career engineers to build new skills in data analytics, data science, data engineering and data visualisation. The programme is creating globally competitive, digital engineers right here in Africa, and we can’t wait to see their full impact on the continent”.

Fred Swaniker, Founder of African Leadership Group, which includes African Leadership Academy, African Leadership University, and ALX