Tech Academy Skills Acquisition Proposal

Background

The Naka Tech Academy program will hold professional tech skills tutoring via Zoom, access to required tech learning equipment, from laptops to data bundles, as well as personalised tech career mentoring opportunities for young Africans between the ages of 13-24 to address the inadequate tech learning opportunities for disadvantaged African youth. The program's tech learning opportunity is enhanced by allocating tech learning tools and equipment and the chance to participate in personalised mentoring and career grooming sessions for optimal employment success prospects.

The skills learning programs for 300 young Africans aged 13-24 will hold weekly on Zoom, and its curriculum will focus on coding, cybersecurity, software engineering and digital marketing. Learners will have access to laptops and internet-enabling aids to support program objectives of bridging the obtainable standards of tech learning opportunities for disadvantaged youth and equipping an incoming generation of solution providers for Africa with globally recognised skills for innovative technological solutions.

This program is hinged on the premise that tech learning opportunities are mainly unavailable to disadvantaged young Africans, and this position is compounded even further by the non-availability of tech learning equipment, internet access and positive follow-up through mentoring, CV and interview planning for optimal career and employment success prospects in the tech ecosystem.

Eligibility Criteria

To achieve its objective, the academy has set some eligibility criteria for participation in the program:

Beneficiaries must be African. This is based on projected economic growth figures for Africa as of December 2021, which include an expected USD 300 billion contribution to the region’s GDP from a projected 10% annual growth rate in her tech economy. The above economic growth figure is based on the premise that the population of work-age Africans will reach 450 million people in 2035, with job market entrants estimated at 10 to 15 million young people annually.

Beneficiaries must be between the ages of 13-24. Available economic growth figures show that 70% of the continent’s population will be able to work and require job-ready skills by 2035, a little over ten years from now. This age bracket is equally essential in the grand scheme of equipping the next generation with global standard tech and problem-solving skills considering the annual exit of 70,000 skilled professionals from Africa to developed nations in search of improved work and living conditions, which may cause a catastrophic “brain drain” on the continent’s talent resources if not mitigated timely.

Beneficiaries must be from underprivileged backgrounds. A lingering challenge faced by tech educational planners in developing environments is that most available information and communication technologies (ICT) products are more accessible to high-income and more conspicuous participants than those in more challenging and disadvantaged environments such as the low-resource, poor, rural and isolated African communities. This defeats the purpose of tech as a tool for development, as ironically, it becomes inaccessible to those it is supposed to benefit the most.

Takeaway and Incentives

Beneficiaries would receive necessary tech learning tools ranging from laptops, wifi routers, data bundles and subscriptions to coding resources platforms. This is another drawback to tech educational programs in Africa, as the target recipients, unlike their counterparts in most developed nations, may not have access to power or even the most basic tech learning tools such as laptops and wifi availability and/or connectivity aids. This puts them at a learning disadvantage from the start mandating this program to cover this lapse to deliver effective learning outcomes. The program seeks to do so by ensuring the provision of laptops for learners, wifi connectivity tools such as routers and enabling internet availability in the form of data packages for the learning duration. This would be accompanied by a subscription to various coding and tech resource platforms to male valuable, relevant learning materials to aid the learners’ journey.

Beneficiaries will have access to mentoring and career guidance opportunities. Mentoring as part of learning programs is often overlooked and leaves many learners floundering after skill attainment in a seemingly, myriad ocean of possibilities. Mentoring programs and career guidance workshops have been taught in this learning program to address the gap between learning processes and learners' entry into professional roles, focusing on improving learner career orientation and advancement.

African Technology Sectors - Funding

Let us look at how technology in Africa has fared in the last few years to grasp how pivotal technology has been as a critical enabler for solutions development - from the revolutionisation of agriculture to tackling global warming.

FinTech

The fintech sector, the strongest contender in the African tech ecosystem, raised over USD 5 billion last year, with observers saying the figure will rise to USD 7 billion based on African Tech investment tracking. Fintech has been the greatest beneficiary of tech funding in Africa.

AgriTech

Agritech has been credited as an innovative force likely to transform agriculture in Africa, promote food sufficiency and provide 52% employment for her population with an annual GDP contribution of 18%. Many believe agriculture to be the future of exports in some parts of the continent. Investment in the sector, however, has been slow, with only USD 127 million in funding in contrast to the available annual growth fund of USD 2 to 5 billion.

CleanTech

Cleantech, focusing on renewable energy, remains a crucial area for development. 75% of the global population with no electricity resides in Africa. Electricity has been identified as a critical socio-economic growth driver, and Africa has huge growth potential in clean and renewable energy solutions. This year a cleantech startup became the second most funded industry after a USD 260 million investment moved them closer to the wider propagation of solar energy as a renewable and sustainable energy source for the continent.

Artificial Intelligence [AI]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not left out despite a large underrepresentation of Africa on the global tech stage. Growth in this sector has been slow, and of the USD 36 billion globally available funding for AI-powered tech, only USD 11.63 billion has been invested in Africa since 2020.

Why Edtech

COVID paved the way for developments in innovative ed-tech solutions making education delivery more streamlined and location independent to bring education to billions of learners in the safety of their homes. The industry attracted an influx of funding, but the African ed-tech sector, unprepared for this challenge, raised less than USD 40 million out of globally available funds of USD 20 billion. In the face of an educational crisis with over 100 million out-of-school children across different educational levels on the African continent, room for growth in ed-tech still exists.

On this premise, the academy’s program recognises the need to strengthen Africa as a tech superpower leveraging on digital education of Africans in tech skills to achieve this aim. This platform for educational opportunities was created to fulfil their development quota. The academy will train talented and exceptional youth in coding, software engineering and digital marketing. These fundamental tech skills will enable participation in front-row transformation in Africa. The accessibility of world-class learning opportunities to under-represented Africans drives our mission of pioneering the emergence of another generation of innovative tech solution providers for the African nation.

Sustainability Models

Sustaining a venture for any period, especially long term, demands insight and extensive planning. Our sustainability model is built on Social, Economic and Environmental pillars. These pillars constitute Naka Tech Academy’s broad focus on sustaining the program and scaling down to a people and planet model.

Social Element:

The program classes will be facilitated by professionals in the tech industry who are passionate about what they do - giving back to society in ways that will equip others with the skills needed to thrive in the global tech sector. They know and believe that the handing down knowledge will create and sustain a future of increased learning and knowledge building, promoting growth on a mass scale in the economically disadvantaged communities that form our program's target recipients. Likewise, in due time, we believe that successful recipients of the program will pay it forward by taking on active roles in the program and also investing their time, knowledge and resources in a new crop of the program's beneficiaries.

Economic Element:

Our mission focuses on serving as an educational change agent to disadvantaged youths and keeping this in mind, funding for the program will focus on obtaining tech educational grants from like-minded change proponents, stakeholders in the global tech ecosystem, global tech educational grants and a tailored pay-as-you-earn model that would allow beneficiaries take part in the program on the premise that they would be required to pay for the program and equipment received after successful employment and job placement. This model would guarantee a continued funding source for the project outside of individual donations and educational grant funding. In time the program would become self-supporting.

Environmental Element:

Our project model relies on an enabling environment with favourable government regulations and stakeholder policies to protect our interest, guarantee investment return, and create an investment and funding option for interested parties and stakeholders.

EdTech Sector Projected Funding Expenditure 2018 - 2025

Program Goal Actualisation Milestones

ACTIVITIES FOR GOAL REALISATION
Enrol Africans	Learners from the concerned regions are more likely to have first-hand knowledge of issues plaguing their respective regions and be able to tailor innovative solutions.
13-24 Age range	Based on growing workforce shortage concerns, these young people will be poised to enter/take over from their peers shortly.
Disadvantaged communities	Young people in this demographic are likelier to fit the higher needs ratio for the educational services offered than their peers from the middle-high income demographic.
Provision of Tech learning tools	Most young people in the targeted demographic may not have steady access to tech learning tools and internet aids and would require their provision to aid learning.
Mentoring and Career Guidance	To fully utilise acquired skills and maximise employment prospects, mentoring/ career guidance(CV  and interview training) will be available for learners.