Why Africa needs IT Training
The Emerging Countries of the African Continent are catching up to the technological development of the rest of the world, or at least trying to catch up. There is, however, a great tech development outcome at the majority countries which is the lack of knowledge to implement locally the technological innovations. Let’s dig into the reasons why Africa needs IT Training.
It has been showed by most of international agencies’ reports that the investment in internal R&D sectors is the best option for the technological knowledge development in African countries, which would reduce the dependence of external imports and fluctuations of interests. Nevertheless, knowledge requires knowledge. On the short term these countries are required to import and gather foreign knowledge. The only logical way to achieve knowledge is by copying and imitate, followed by improvement and innovation and finally original creation. There are many other factors that contributes to this lack of knowledge.
Why IT Training in Africa and specific IT skills are necessary for performing technology jobs?
- Firstly, the underestimate of the R&D sector in Emerging African Countries is most impairing to their development. Since foreign technology needs to be imported in order to develop the country’s technology, the lack of local currency to invest in many of these countries makes the implementation of technical knowledge very difficult. The local implementation of these knowledge is inevitably getting better as the globalisation phenomenon advances but even so, the difficulties remain unless there is governmental or private incentive. According to recent studies, approximately 80% of small businesses across the African continent suffer from underfunding due to lack of internal investment and to the lack of access to management and business education, which will be addressed later.
- Secondly, even if there is a fair amount of technological investment and importing, there must be set in place with a good enough R&D sector, able to research it, learn from it and ultimately improve it and create original inventions based on it. Without that learning process, the increasing tech import will only lead to an increasing dependency of this countries towards the developed ones. Adding to the lack of research infrastructures, there is also little investment to the transport and communication which damages the capabilities of a company to produce and deliver quality services.
- Thirdly, there is an obvious and underline issue harming the technological improvements of these countries, one that isn’t either new or easily solvable: education. There isn’t just a lack of knowledge absorption by these countries but there is also a lack of knowledge distribution so to speak. The investment in better education infrastructures and in foreign services that may provide expert technological knowledge are essential not only to qualified labour development but also to a bigger scientific and technological community in each country. This would allow to contribute on developing mindsets and to improve local people conditions.
- Finally, as it was said before that not only there are needs to be invested in research and development but there are also needs to have an investment into business education. Once there are qualified personnel working in the research of new technologies, its development and creation of those new technologies, there are needs to be qualified personnel working to sell it. The underfunding of African start-ups is not only caused by the lack of credibility and investment into new businesses but also by the lack of formal business management training of small business owners. Availability of this knowledge would allow start-up owners to build reasonable business plans which attracts investment.
In conclusion, the Emerging African Countries and scientific communities have been showing, in general, a willingness and an effort to improve. The globalisation phenomenon, which has been rapidly encompassing the whole world, brought a wave of change which the African governments and institutions are currently striving and willing to be a part of. That being the case, now more than ever there is the need to create an open communication between these governments, institutions and service providers which can directly help in areas as research and development, whom are eager to deploy within these markets which so many others choose to ignore.
“Allowing people to have knowledge is allowing high qualified development on each company. For many years, we saw how is difficult to overcome the training challenges, and to make qualified workers for companies or institutions. We are fighting to break those challenges and provide high level IT training, certifications and workers that can be proud of their know-how.“
By sharing documentation and knowledge, we also give to equally to everyone, the freedom to go beyond borders.
Talk to us to find more about our IT courses and what we have been doing to improve Africa landscape together with our IT Training partners, ATEC and Digital Skills.
Luís Canejo
Social PR Evangelist
Sun Evo Tech
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