MTN Group has collaborated with SAS Training to teach data analytics to up to 100 young people.
According to a statement, the initiative forms part of the MTN Skills Academy’s work to promote digital skills for digital jobs, in turn supporting MTN Group’s strategy to provide digital solutions for Africa’s progress.
The training initiative consists of a six-week programme, the first part of which is self-paced, and the second contains instructor-led courses.
After the initial six-week programme, half of the participants will undergo further training with MTN’s in-house data analytics academy.
Ebenezer Asante, MTN Group senior VP for markets, explains: “For Africa to realise its full potential, we need to address the lack of skills funding.
“Africa has the largest and fastest-growing youth population in the world. While this holds tremendous development promise, youth unemployment statistics remain a cause for major concern. It is only by investing in developing the right skills that we are going to overcome this challenge.”
Polaris Market Research puts the 2021 value of the global data science platform market at $95 billion and expects it to expand at a compound annual growth rate of more than 27% through to 2030, driven by the increasing data volumes being generated by organisations.
MTN launched the MTN Skills Academy earlier this year, to bridge the data analytics skills gapacross several parts of the continent, including SA.
The Skills Academy is made up of four components: career guidance, digital and financial training, work readiness and mentoring, and job placements.
“We are committed to supporting public and private organisations across Africa to adopt cloud platforms to tap into the full potential of their analytic capabilities and resources, to accelerate innovation and higher operational efficiencies,” comments Essie Mokgonyana, SAS country manager and sales director for South Africa.
“Key to this support is being a part of the change; to create and sustain skills-based training programmes that not only meet industries’ needs for critical data science skills, while offering the youth of today opportunities to access gainful professional advancement and employment tomorrow, but lay the path for future talent pipelines.”
According to SAS, during this programme, all participants will have full access to SAS Skill Builder for Students, which includes a repository of resources to help participants learn SAS data science skills. These include a wide variety of resources from free online courses for certification purposes, to exam preparation materials, and practical case studies where participants can learn more about how SAS software solutions are used in the industries they're interested in and for their career advancement, according to the company.
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