Google equips ‘500,000’ Africans with digital skills

Google has trained 500,000 Africans on digital skills, six months after announcing the plan to train one million people from the continent.

This training has enabled them to build businesses, create jobs and boost economic growth across the continent.

Vanessa Morris, a journalism graduate from Nigeria had never heard about the term ‘digital marketing’ before she was invited to one of the digital skills courses by a friend.

She decided to pursue a career in digital marketing after the training and has since taken up a social media manager role with a top production company in Nigeria.

In Vanessa’s words, “the best thing about this is that I now earn a lot more money doing a job that I really love.”

People across Africa are thirsty to explore how to take better advantage of the internet and the opportunities it offers but frameworks that provide digital skills training on the continent are few and far between.

For people who are unable to attend face-to-face training sessions and who want to acquire digital skills in their own time from their own phone or computer, a new Digital Skills Africa online portal is being launched.

The portal contains 89 online lessons on a wide range of digital subjects including web analytics, social media management, and mobile marketing.