Zwart Talent Foundation, a nonprofit organisation established to bridge the tech talent gap, has advised governments in Africa to deploy resources to education in Information Technology (IT) to tackle poverty.
This is contained in a statement issued on Tuesday in Lagos by Mr Tosin Ajulo, the Chairman of Zwart Talent Foundation, who noted that poverty is a major problem across the world and not peculiar to only African countries.
According to Ajulo, the developed world has made us believe that Africa is the poverty capital of the world.
He said that African leaders have a duty to debunk their claim and find quick and practical solutions to combat the endemic poverty on the continent.
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“We strongly believe that the right type of education can lift millions of underserved Africans out of poverty and technology education is that key element.
‘’ This is because of the worldwide shift to the digital economy. The kinds of jobs out there have changed.
“Global companies are looking for software experts, coders, UX UI designers, and system analysts among others.
“If we deploy efforts into training youths in tech education, they are guaranteed to get both local and international jobs to earn more and eventually take their families and communities out of poverty,” Ajulo said.
Citing the World Bank Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report 2020, he said that the concentration of high poverty rates in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) shows the image of a poverty belt extending from Senegal to Ethiopia and from Mali to Madagascar.
Ajulo quoted the reports as saying half of the countries in SSA have poverty rates higher than 35 per cent.
According to him, the World Bank statistics are even more alarming when compared with the levels of extreme poverty in other regions.
He said that the report further shows that of the top 20 economies with poverty rates estimates, 18 are in SSA.
On what the foundation is doing to tackle poverty, Ajulo said that it was training the vulnerable and young African population in IT skills to boost their economic status.
“At Zwart Talent Foundation, our social innovation is that we train underserved youths in IT skills for free and within two years, they become junior developers and start earning.
“Our solution is quick, effective and not time-consuming compared to the typical education we are all familiar with. Our target is to get thousands out of poverty but we cannot do this alone.
”We need every support we can get from governments across Africa because with the population growing at a geometric rate, it will get to a point when conventional education cannot suffice and there would be serious competition for the limited resources,” he said.
NAN
