IBM to bridge the African digital divide

IBM recently announced the investment of US$70 million in bridging the digital divide across the African continent and this new initiative termed as “IBM Digital – Nation Africa”, will provide a cloud-based learning platform designed to offer free skills development programs for up to 25 million African youths in next five years, enabling digital competence and nurturing innovation in Africa.

The program will be launched from IBM’s regional offices in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, and Egypt. According to IBM, this will enable the expansion of the initiative across the continent.

“IBM sees effective, high quality IT education as a key driver of economic vitality in Africa. Through access to open standards, best practices, IBM tools, and course materials, the broad scope of this initiative will enable vital skills development”, said Hamilton Ratshefola, country general manager at IBM South Africa. “In order to find solutions to Africa’s challenges, industries across the spectrum need to enable the existing and future workforce to perform at the forefront of technologies such as cognitive and cloud computing. This will be the key to spurring economic growth.”