Oracle wants to ‘close IT Skills Gap in Africa’

Oracle Corporation says a recent initiative unveiled by the technology company will drive strategies to develop relevant skills among youth, graduates, employees and entrepreneurs.

The four-pronged programme was devised as a response to the rapid adoption of new technologies by governments and businesses in Africa, exacerbating the shortage of suitably skilled practitioners to use the systems to best advantage, according to the US technology company amid increasing interest across the continent, including Nigeria.

“Building a competitive pool of IT-skilled youth in the state is a priority for Lagos State,” Governor Babatunde Fashola, of Lagos State says. “To successfully achieve this goal, it takes multi-stakeholder support and long term collaboration with organizations such as Oracle who share our deepest commitment to building skills and creating exciting job opportunities for the youth of Lagos. We are off to a good start and look forward to increasing that impact in the coming months.”

It is also a response to enrich and increase the skills capacity of IT practitioners in Africa according to Oracle which says the dramatic advancement of technology over the past five years has resulted in a gap in IT competencies and skills availability.

“Organizations in Africa are adopting new technologies at a rate which is outstripping the availability of appropriately qualified staff”, the tech company says.

 “Today IT holds the promise to promote social inclusion, combat corruption, expand the digital economy and enable stronger links between citizens and governments, businesses and customers, NGOs and the communities they serve,” Alfonso Di Ianni, Senior Vice President, Oracle East Central Europe, Middle East and Africa, says. “They can do this and at the same time dramatically reduce costs and improve efficiency.  However for technology to support such transformation, organizations must have ready access to people capable of setting up and maintaining these systems.”

 Consisting of four elements – employee readiness, ecosystem readiness, workforce readiness and youth readiness, Oracle says it is reaching out to governments, the private sector and non-profit organizations to implement a long term skills strategy that will help fulfill demand for relevant IT skills.