Google Expands Digital Skills Program to Aba Community, Promises Jobs and Business Growth.

Aba, popularly known as the hub of Nigerian made brands and bootlegs, is the latest in the long list of African cities to benefit from the Google Digital Skills Program Initiative.

Google’s Digital Skills for Africa is a program designed by Google to help individuals and communities in Africa develop. Its focus is on helping beneficiaries get the required digital skills to find jobs and advance careers. According to Mojolaoluwa Aderemi-Makinde who serves as Head, Brand & Reputation, SSA at Google, the youth make up 60% of Africa’s unemployed. And for this reason, developing digital entrepreneurship and creating new job opportunities for them is critical to Africa’s transformative growth.

We’re doing this because we believe that more needs to be done to empower young Africans to succeed in the digital world.

Mojolaoluwa Aderemi-Makinde, Head, Brand & Reputation, SSA at Googl

The program was established in 2016 with the aim of empowering 1 million African youth with digital skills. It was such a success that in 2017, Google expanded the goal to empowering 10 million African in the next 5 years.

Aba, with a population of 190,886,311, has a community that will benefit immensely from the digital skills program. The industrial city has a N120billon shoe industry. Its GNI Per Capita is (US$)2,080 with over 110,000 artisans engaged in making shoes, bags, and belts and over 50,000 others engage in garment making. The Aba community is the prime location for Google digitals Skills Program.

The Government of Abia State is excited to have Google introduce the Digital Skills Training to the business community and local manufacturers in Aba, Abia State; that that will drive business expansion, help to increase sales and create employment opportunities in Abia State.

The world is now a global place as a result of information technology and Abia through the Digital Skills Training by Google will be able to key into the digital narrative, giving Aba, the commercial hub in Nigeria, the needed visibility.

Barrister Chris Ezem, Secretary to the State Government (SSG).

Eyimba City as Aba is famously called is ranked 16 in The World Bank Group list of favourable location of starting a business in Nigeria. With Google’s efforts to improve the success rates of SMEs across Africa, engaging directly with industrially oriented communities will multiply exponentially the current statistics of Africans with digital skills.

The digital skills training Google offers, either through physical training or the online platform, has proven to support local growth. Currently, over 3 million people are known to have acquired different levels of digital skills, with more being empowered across 29 African countries. And the forecast shows a huge success potential for the program in Aba.