Enhancing Demand Driven Digital and Technological Skills Development

Abstract

The concept note for this conference focuses on one of the pressing challenges facing African states, economies, and societies: the need to create jobs for Africa’s bulging youth populations, enhance their entrepreneurial capacities, and empower them for socioeconomic and political participation commensurate with their demographic weight, the intractable demands of the 21st century, and their historic aspirations. It notes, correctly, that this monumental task entails removing prevailing skills and jobs mismatches, upgrading the employability skills of the youth, and strengthening and reforming educational institutions to prepare them for the jobs of the 21st century. As part of this momentous transformation agenda, it is imperative to promote partnerships between educational institutions, the private sector and other stakeholders, and inculcate innovation mindsets among the youth themselves. Africa is indeed at the proverbial crossroads in which the multiple demographic, economic, ecological, political and social challenges it faces can be turned into opportunities if managed with strategic, systemic and smart interventions, and the seriousness they deserve. If properly harnessed, Africa’s youth bulge has the historic opportunity not only to be the continent’s largest population ever, but to become its most educated and skilled, upon whose weighty shoulders the continent might overcome its half millennia of global marginality, underdevelopment and dependency, and begin realizing the long-deferred dreams of constructing integrated, inclusive, innovative democratic developmental states and societies. The ghastly alternative is a Malthusian nightmare, a future of unimaginable dystopia. In this presentation, we examine the demands and promises of technological skills development for youth employment and employability. We begin by placing the changes, challenges, and opportunities facing contemporary Africa in the context of the mega trends of the 21st century in which the digitalization of the economy, society, politics, work, education, and even leisure and interpersonal relations increasingly loom large. This is followed by examining the role and responsibility of educational institutions in building the capacities, cultures, and competencies required by the exceedingly complex, contradictory and rapid changes of the 21st century. In this context, we discuss some of the initiatives at our own university, the United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa). The presentation ends with a discussion of the imperative for Africa to develop its own high performance computing (HPC) capabilities to ensure the continent becomes an active player, not a permanent pawn, a dynamic producer, not passive consumer, of the technological innovations of the 21st century.