African ICT Foundation aims to reduce ICT illiteracy in Africa upto 50% by 2024

The project is designed to cover the five regions of African Continent - Northern, Western, Southern, Central and Eastern. As per the plan a pilot scheme starting with Nigeria would cover all the geo-political zones respectively.

Nigeria based African ICT Founcation has revelealed its plan to reduce ICT illiteracy in African by 50% by the end of 2024. The foundation which claims to an independent not-for-profit, non-governmental and non-partisan ICT empowerment and educational organization, has also claimed to train 200,000 Nigerians on Digital Skills across the six Geo-Political Zones through its Digital Connect Africa Project.

The strategy was made puboic by the for the President of the African ICT Foundation, Mr. Tony Ojobo at the recent Mobile and Disruptive Technology Forum (#MoDiTECH2019) organised by TechEconomy.ng in Lagos.

"Through our Digital Connect Africa Projects, we have set out to reduce ICT illiteracy in Africa by 50% by the end of 2024 and that would be achieved by the training and empowerment of 100,000 Youths annually across all the 54 African Countries. That is our short term goal," said Mr. Emmanuel Bassey, Executive Secretary of the African ICT Foundation, who represented Mr. Ojobo in the focum. Mr. Bassey, added, "Today I see a new Nigeria driven by talent, innovation, entrepreneurship & excellence, many more can be achieve if we put a little more effort. Innovation excellence in Nigeria is not a rocket science. All we need is the enable environment and will power by the relevant authorities. Recently you might have read in the news that the current minister of Communications Dr. Isa Pantami advising the Nigerian Police Force to resist from harassing youth with Laptops,'.

Speaking on the current projects they are embarking on, he said, "We have decided to train and empower 200,000 Nigerians on Digital Skills across the 6 Geo political Zones through our Digital Connect Africa Project. According to Bassey, the project will provide all participating beneficiaries with the opportunity at a potential partnership with a global financial services and professional information and communications technology companies around the continent. Besides, they will also be benefitted from increased visibility for their start-up initiatives by being showcased on AfICTF's global investment platform informed Bassey.

Speaking further, he said that the Digital Connect Africa – DCA initiative is primarily designed to empower Africa's success by providing government, financial, academic and business solutions supports that will help Africa move from aid-based economies to self-sustaining, knowledge-based economies, creating sustainable skills for Africans everywhere. "The project is designed to cover the five Regions of Northern, Western, Southern, Central and Eastern Africa with West Africa as a pilot scheme starting with Nigeria and covering the six geo-political Zones respectively," he added. According to Bassey, the project, Digital Connect Africa – DCA seeks the most promising start-ups in Africa with focused on the following areas:

• mAgriculture / eAgriculture & Environmental Sustainability
• mHealth, eHealth & Health Information Systems
• eGovernment – Services to Citizens & Business
• Collaborative Open Innovation and ICT-enabled Entrepreneurship (including Social Entrepreneurship)
• Content Technologies: Languages; Digital Preservation
• Cyber Security, Privacy and Trust
• Next Generation Computing: Big Data, Cloud Computing, Future Internet, Internet of Things (IoT), AI
• Technology-enhanced Learning and eSkills

(With inputs from African ICT Foundation)