Chief Executive of Vodafone Ghana, Yolanda Cuba, has announced the launch of an international digital skills programme by Vodafone.
The international skills programme which appears to be the largest of its kind in the world aims to provide career guidance and access to training content in the digital economy for up to 10 million young people across 18 countries.
According to her, Vodafone will expand its existing graduate, apprenticeship, internship and work experience schemes worldwide to reach a total of 100,000 young people worldwide by 2022.
This she said will enable them to gain direct experience of the digital workplace.
Meanwhile the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that more than 200 million young people are either unemployed or have a job but live in poverty.
In many of the countries in which Vodafone operates, including Ghana, youth unemployment is at record levels. Previous studies have found that a prolonged period of unemployment shortly after a young person leaves school to enter the workforce, can have a lifelong negative effect on individual confidence, self-esteem and wellbeing.
Commenting on that, Yolanda Cuba said just as the needs of this new age are unique and complex, the workplace of the future requires a human resource equipped with a new mind-set of winning.
She added that their Digital Skills portal is a very timely tool to equip the youth with the necessary skills and know-how to embrace the increasing demands of the world of work.
“Over time, every workplace will go digital, creating accelerating demand for a wide range of specialist technology skills. We want to help connect the new generation to the new world of work,” she explained.
Over the last year, Vodafone has worked with specialist psychologists, careers advisers and training providers to develop a smartphone-based service – called the Future Jobs Finder (https://futurejobsfinder.vodafone.com/) – that offers young people a simple but comprehensive gateway to new skills and opportunities for employment in the digital economy.
As a leading technology company, Vodafone has a strong employer brand recognised by young people. In each of the 26 countries in which it operates, there are well-established graduate, apprenticeship and internship schemes as well as a wide range of work experience opportunities including coding classes for high school girls.
