This week I met with two organisations providing people in East Africa with skills for the future.
“The future of work” is something I’ve been contemplating a lot recently, and both seem to have developed a view of what the world will look like in 0-20 years, and subsequently designed themselves to equip students accordingly.
Africa Digital Media Institute (ADMI)
ADMI trains people in creative skills such as Film & TV, Sound Engineering, Graphic Design and Game Development.
There’s high spec equipment in the school and students are encouraged to explore personal projects alongside their studies. Last year graduates from ADMI were nominated for an Oscar.
On Tuesday, I hosted a workshop on how to start a podcast. I’ve been working with ADMI to give experience to audio engineers to work on The East Africa Business Podcast which I’ve started up again recently.
Moringa School
On Thursday I interviewed the founder (again) after first speaking with Audrey in 2016.
We caught up on how Moringa School has been expanding over the past few years and has had partnerships to teach (amongst others) women in Rwanda how to code.
Moringa offers high quality, practical education that results in 90%+ job placements afterwards.
Modern solutions to lack of jobs
Youth unemployment is one of the big things in (East) Africa as the demographic characteristics play out.
The traditional methodology of spending 3-4 years at university only to be left with student debt and scant “job-ready” skills seem to be waning.
Institutions like ADMI and Moringa School are aiming to drive the change towards practical, vocational based education that more closely matches the market.
Around the world a lot of people talk about the outdated model of universities, however, in East Africa where job competitiveness is even higher, market forces may drive behaviour change the quickest.
In other news…
I’m off to Zambia today for a week’s holiday. I’ll share pics etc. next week and if I’m not too responsive on email etc., apologies in advance.
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