Google set to help SA young to go digital
Country falling behind, it says
INTERNET giant Google said yesterday that the South African government could do more to partner with it in giving young people digital skills that would enable them to fend for themselves.
The company said it had, over the course of a year, trained more than 1 million Africans in 27 countries to grow digital economies across the continent. While the majority of trainees came from Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, the country still lagged with only 70 000 people trained compared to 450 000 trained in both Nigeria and Kenya.
Initiative
Google South Africa head of policy and government relations, Fortune Mgwili-Sibanda, said the initiative had flourished in Nigeria and Kenya because of the governments’ buy-in, which made the programme part of the National Youth Service.
“In South Africa we have the National Development Plan, which talks about growing a knowledge economy, but very little is happening on the ground. It is disappointing that we knock on government doors but they are not opened,” Sibanda said.
Data from Internet World Stats show only 335 million of Africa’s estimated 1.2 billion population used the internet at the end of last year. South Africa, with its 55 million citizens, has 28 million internet users during the period.
Google South Africa country director Luke Mckend said the company was committed to helping local businesses thrive online to allow them to play a meaningful role in the economy.
“Through our different initiatives, a number of small businesses have been helped. Our tools and technologies are simply enablers for anyone who wants to build a global business to connect with new customers or share their creations,” Mckend said.
He added that it was critical for entrepreneurs to acquire digital skills to build their businesses and create jobs. More and more of US-based technology firms are targeting Africa as a key market to roll out information technology and digital programmes to its young population.
‘Our tools and technologies are simply enablers for anyone who wants to build a global business’
American multinational technology company IBM last month said it had committed $70 million (R920m) over the next five years with the aim of equipping as many as 25 million Africans with information technology (IT) skills.
The New York company said the investment would be used to build and develop digital, cloud, and cognitive IT skills to help support a 21st century workforce on the continent.
The programme would be rolled out from IBM’s regional offices in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, and Egypt.
Google said after the success of the first programme, it would expand it by delivering the off-line trainings in African languages such as Swahili, isiZulu and Hausa.
Last month, global technology firm Siemens released its African Digitisation Maturity Report that was conducted to benchmark levels of digitisation in South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya.
The report focused on four pillars of economic maturity, the digital environment, infrastructure, and skills and digital literacy in the four countries. It found that overall South Africa ranked first.