‘Digital Skills Development Will Change the African Narrative’

Elev8’s Africa Regional Director, Dr. Rutendo Hwindingwi and its Nigeria Country Manager, John Nsikak, speaks about the need to change the Africa narrative from consuming nations to producing nations, through digital skills training. Emma Okonji presents the excerpts:

What is your view about African digital transformation designed to bridge the existing digital divide between Africa and the rest of the world, and what is the role of Elev8 in addressing the situation?

Elev8 is bridging the digital divide by equipping people with digital skills at a time when Africa is searching for digital skills growth that will enable the continent to compete in global economy digital opportunities. Our focus is to create digital leaders across the African continent. Digital is the lever that Africans can  be used to catch up with the rest of the world.

Digital transformation is sweeping across continents, but the African continent is yet to feel much of the impact. What can be done to deepen digital transformation across African countries?

Again, our value proposition is about bridging the digital gap, and we do that by creating digital capabilities among people so that people can solve the challenge of digital transformation. For example in the healthcare sector, for instance, you will notice that the one major challenge is the provision of medical facilities in remote parts of African countries. But with access to mobile devices and applications, doctors can through telemedicine, have contact with people in remote places and have patients attend clinics virtually, and that is the power of digital transformation. So, governments across Africa must invest in the technology that will drive digital transformation. Governments must also invest in people because the people must be digitally skilled to use these emerging technologies; driving digital transformation to bring about benefits to the African people. Digital transformation is about using technology to address challenges and create opportunities. 

What is the key focus of Elev8 and what is its value proposition?

At Elev8, we are focused on equipping people with digital skills. We realize that technology is a key component in driving economic growth through industrialization and human capital development. COVID has allowed everyone globally to leverage technology across all sectors of the global economy, be it in health, Agritech, Edutech, Fintech, e-Commerce, manufacturing, or telecommunications. We also train people to improve their employability skills. One of our unique values is our partnership with Microsoft and others and so we understand the requirements of the market needs from a skills perspective. We work with startups and innovation hubs and use technology to scale up because the future of economic growth in Africa is based around Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and startups. 

So Elev8 is a multinational organization that is focused on re-skilling and upskilling digital capacity and talents in people to address the needs of Africa and the world at large.

It has been predicted that one billion jobs would be transformed globally by 2030. As a global digital scaling partner that bridges the digital skills gap, how will Elev8 contribute to the one billion global job transformation?

Africa’s GDP is plus or minus 3 per cent of global GDP, so our economy in Africa is still small. It has been projected that by 2050, 40 per cent of the world’s youth is going to come from Africa thanks to its young population which people sometimes call the demographic dividend of Africa. The truth is that if jobs are not created for these people, they will become a social time bomb that is waiting to explode. The beauty of digital skills is that if the people are equipped with digital skills, they will not only have the opportunity to work with the skills in Africa but can have the opportunity to work anywhere in the world and be paid in foreign currency. So with that, Africa can export skills to foreign countries. We have a responsibility to train African youths in digital skills and help the population of young people to take advantage of the available digital skills jobs to contribute to the global economy. 

Elev8 is developing human capacity to transform the one billion jobs by 2030. Africa is rich in arable land, and mineral resources, but poor in digital skills acquisition and Elev8 is building the African capacity workplace that will convert her rich arable land and huge mineral resources to commercial value for themselves and the African continent. The huge population of African youths is a blessing for Africa and Elev8 is building the digital skills among the population that will transform the African economy. 

How is Elev8 leveraging emerging technologies like Cloud, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Internet of Things among others to upskill and re-skill the workforce of tomorrow?

We design learning journeys that help organizations deliver outcomes and achieve their goals. Aside from leveraging emerging technologies like cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data and Internet of Things (IoTs) among others, for our business, we also build skills to transfer knowledge in emerging technologies to others.

Emerging technologies are projected to reduce traditional jobs and also create new technology skills jobs. What do you believe are the best ways to develop capacities that will handle the new tech-savvy jobs that will be created from emerging technologies?

Several years ago, people used camels for transportation and movement of goods from one location to another. Later, cars were invented and used for transportation and movement of goods from one location to another. At the initial stage when cars were invented, those that invested in camels for transportation felt threatened that jobs will be lost, but contrary to that, new jobs were created maintaining cars. Innovation is what drives the world and our economies. Today the world has evolved to the extent that medical doctors can treat their patients from distant and remote locations, using Artificial Intelligence that is embedded in telemedicine. So as technology is reducing traditional jobs, it is also creating new digital jobs for those who have the digital skills. For us as at Elev8, we are adopting emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, to help develop and grow new opportunities that emerging technologies bring. 

What are your plans to grow Information Technology talents in Nigeria and other African countries?

Elev8 has massive programmes running that are targeted at the many not the few. We have partnership arrangements with multi-national companies like Microsoft, where we train software developers across African countries. In Nigeria alone, we are looking at about 500,000 developers that will come from the country. We are providing programmes to re-skill and upskill people by building capacities in software development. We have a physical office in Nigeria, from where we carry out our training and capacity-building programmes. By so doing, we support the Nigerian economy by working with partners to train Nigerians. 

As a global digital scaling partner, who are your partners that will help in re-skilling and up-skilling digital talents in Nigeria and how effective are they?

We have global partners like Microsoft, MicroFocus, and other great brands. As a global company that Elev8 is, these partners are happy to work with us to deliver on our mandate to re-skill and upscale digital talents. What we are doing is creating digital skills for the future. Most countries of the world understand the need for digital skills, and they are being proactive by creating digital competencies and training people because they have realized that there will be a need for such digital skills tomorrow. These are the things we do, and we hope to replicate them in Nigeria and other African countries. 

Elev8 in 2021, promised to upskill over 1,000 Nigerian businesses to meet global technology adoption and digital transformation. To what extent has this been achieved? 

The training has been ongoing, and we keep to our promises at Elev8. We have been in Nigeria for a few years now and we have been developing digital skills among businesses and individuals. In the last three months in Nigeria, have upskilled more than 125 people with digital skills, in one programme alone. 

Tell us about some  success stories of your training programmes and how they have impacted individuals, organisations and economies in Nigeria and globally?

Our training programmes have impacted individuals, organizations and economies in different ways. For the individuals, it has impacted the area of employability, especially for the young generation. People graduate from schools with intellectual skills, which although great are not employable skills. So what we do is to provide them with digital skills that will make them employable. For those who are already working, we can upskill them to help them develop their careers. The truth is that technology is evolving by the day and staff of organizations need to be abreast of current digital skills to stay ahead.

From an organizational perspective, we have impacted organisations with our digital skills training. The greatest asset of any enterprise is the people, the human capital. Technology is an enabler and the strength of any organization is the people working in the it and not the technology itself. It is good to invest in technology but investing in people who will use the technology is very important and a blend of both will have a perfect result. From an economic perspective, our training has impacted economies so much that if you bring all the three perspectives together, individuals, organizations and economies, you can see the positive effect this is having on local and national economic output. Analysts have said that economies do not grow by consumption, but by production, manufacturing and industrialization, which our training seeks to address. African countries have always been at the consuming end, but with digital skills development, Elev8 will change the narrative from a consuming continent to producing continent. 

Aside from the delivery of core digital skills, what is Elev8 doing to address the challenges of soft skills, which are also needed for individual and organisational growth?

At Elev8, we try to create a balance between digital skills and soft skills. We also refer to soft skills as power skills, which are the basic skills centered around work team, leadership skills and emotional intelligence. These skills are very powerful and complement the core digital skills, which are sometimes referred to as technical skills. We are aware that developing digital skills alone without soft skills will not deliver the right results. The truth is that every business and individual must be digitally transformed to succeed.

As technology is advancing, cyberattacks are also on the increase and pulling down institutions. What is the solution and way forward?

Every development comes with its opportunities and challenges. In every technology development, where data is involved, there will always be cyberattacks. Even with cyberattacks, we all know that wealth is knowledge and data is also knowledge. So, we just need to be proactive to address the challenges of these attacks. The only way to address cyberattacks is to develop new policies and legislation that will control such attacks, using technology. Cyberattacks are not just an African challenge, but a global challenge and we must address them collectively.

What is your view about the readiness of Nigerian youths to learn digital skills and their resilience to re-skilling and up-scaling?

We must say we are proud of the Nigerian youths for their resilience and willingness to learn new digital skills. Nigerian youths are enterprising and willing to learn. We just concluded a class of 120 and we were impressed by their zeal and performances. Nigeria is listed among the top countries in cryptocurrency adoption and Nigerian youths are the ones driving that initiative. They are ready to push the boundaries and create values for themselves. Elev8 is impressed with Nigerian youths and we are willing and ready to take them from where they are, to where they want to be.