A Google executive, Ms. Bunmi Banjo, on Monday said Google is preparing African youths for future online jobs.
Banjo, who is the Head, Digital Education, Google Sub-Saharan Africa, told the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos that the digital era in which the world was in, meant future jobs would be online.
She said African youths needed to be able to tap into these growing online opportunities, so that they would not be stranded.
“In view of this fact, Google is poised to bridge the big gap between youths and online future jobs.
“In the job market, there is a big gap between future jobs that is jobs that are going to be available in the near future and the preparedness of young people to fill such positions.
“In order to fill this existing gap, Google introduced a portal called digitalskills.go.com.
“The idea is to train young people. We will show them what is possible with the web and how they can earn income through it and help their communities,’’ the Google executive said.
Banjo said under the training scheme, it would train a million youths from 23 countries.
According to her, the programme which started in April, was yielding great results as 500,000 youths had already been trained between the commencement date and September.
“We have met half of our target; we need another six months, which will end in March to train the remaining 500,000 youths with the help of our partners.
“Out of these figure, 400,000 youths are to come from Nigeria.
“The programme involves six hours of content, 89 videos, with an option to choose either the business training or for young people. The training is also in three languages: English, French and Portuguese.’’
According to her, the idea is not charity, even though the training is free.
Banjo said the benefit to Google was in having a thriving digital economy in Nigeria in particular and Africa, in general.
NAN
