BY MENGESTEAB TESHOME
These days, information and communication technologies (ICT) have become crucial sector for transforming societies, shaping business landscape. stimulating and spurring rapid economic growth across the globe.
However, the swift advancement and progress of the sector is challenged immensely owing to shortage of high quality talents.
Particularly, most of higher education institutions are being limited to theories and concepts rather than actual practices, the sector is challenged hugely.
To this end and cultivate ICT talent ecosystem in Ethiopia, thereby to create efficient communication between the ICT industry and the education industry, of late, Jobs Creation Commission (JCC) and Huawei, a leading global provider of telecom infrastructure, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
Speaking on the occasion, Nigussu Tilahun, Jobs Creation Commissioner said that the Commission has acknowledged the relevance of such private sector actors in building the capacity of the youth and creating job opportunities, especially in the IT and Technology sectors. The sectors will contribute greatly to the Digital Transformation plans of Ethiopia in the coming years.
Huawei Technologies Ethiopia CEO Chen Mingliang on his part stated that the Company’s partnership with the Commission will take its efforts to the next level. Over the next three years, Huawei plans to deliver courses on communications technologies, cutting-edge techs like cloud computing, and enterprise network building for graduates, entrepreneurs, and professionals looking for opportunities abroad.
“With the leadership and strategic partnership of JCC, we will endeavor to achieve our goals in terms of training, certifying and job matching, and I have a firm belief we will achieve them,” Chen added.
Huawei’s training and certification will build a career path for new graduates, students, and equip entrepreneurs with the latest trends in the industry. The Ecosystem will also accredit local workforce with international standards through JCC’s skill development, entrepreneurship and oversees employment programs.
The program is designed to train and certify 800 professionals in the first year; and 4000 within the coming three years to produce competent professionals who can compete in the local and international labor market. In the first year of rollout, Huawei – JCC ICT Ecosystem aims to raise awareness from the public, promote job opportunities, training and certifications with 40 universities that will be scaled up to cover 100 universities and TVET institutions in the next three years.
The JCC aimed at creating 20 million jobs by the year 2030. In the last fiscal year, the Commission has created three million jobs for the youths and striving to create more than 14 million jobs in the next four years.
The opening up of the telecom sector is expected to create over 10,000 job opportunities. With over 20 years of engagement in Ethiopia’s development, Huawei currently created over 300 jobs and benefited over 45.8 million people with its services and products, it was learnt.
The ecosystem will help students and professionals to get internationally recognized certification and develop better carrier path in telecom and IT sectors, it was learnt.
The Ethiopian Herald April 15/2021
