More than 43,100 youth across the Middle East and North Africa have learned urgently needed coding skills, fostering youth development and job creation, industry experts announced today ahead of the United Nation’s World Youth Skills Day on 15 July.
Showing the strong need for digital jobs, IDC projects the Middle East and Africa IT market to top USD 83 billion in 2020. In the Middle East, coding is taking on increased prominence in the job market, especially with the UAE-led 1 Million Arab Coders Initiative to foster coding-related jobs.
As a matter of fact, more than 900 bootcamp graduates have gained employment in Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, and Yemen, as well in other countries, including Canada and Sweden. Digital Skills for Today coding has raised the awareness of the importance and value of Digital Literacy as the new language to support the era of digital transformation.
“Digital Skills for Today directly improves quality of life by providing in-demand skills for the 21st-century job market,” said Batoul Husseini, the Director of Government Affairs Middle East North, Corporate Social Responsibility Lead – MENA, SAP. “Furthermore, the initiative has valuable social outcomes, decreasing unemployment rates in marginalized populations, and providing long-term opportunities for digital innovation and entrepreneurship.”
Digital Skills for Today is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) collaboration between global technology company SAP, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Injaz Al Arab, ReBootKamp (RBK), and re:Coded.
SAP Digital Skills for Today includes introducing Digital Literacy, Upskilling for Employment and Fostering Entrepreneurship. SAP’s contribution to UNHCR was able to support 945 displaced persons in MENA in the response to COVID-19.
