Equipping the youth with the on-demand digital skills is key important in this ever changing world. These skills can make them competitive in the ever changing world where demand for such skills keep rising. To ensure more youths have the chance of improving their digital skills, Huawei in partnership with Close the Gap have opened the first mobile computer lab in Kenya.
The mobile computer lab’s aim is to scale up its activity across the country with half of its beneficiaries expected to be girls and women.
The facility known as DigiTruck has been built by Huawei in partnership with Close the Gap and operated by the Computers for Schools Kenya. It seeks to train Kenyans across all 47 counties impacting 10,000 youth annually. This will hopefully drive to expand and deepen computer literacy.
Addressing this on a visit to DigiTruck, VicePresident Rigathi Gachagua reiterated the government’s steadfast commitment to enhancing digital literacy among Kenyans.
“We intend to increase our investments in digital technology as a sure path to the national job creation agenda. Government services are steadily and increasingly becoming digital and we estimate that by the year 2030, 50 to 55% of jobs in Kenya will depend on digital skills. Our partnership to train 10,000 Kenyans a year will strengthen digital skills for online jobs,” said Rigathi Gachagua,
DigiTruck lab is converted from a used shipping container and mounted in a truck. It is fully solar-powered that can be driven to remote communities, even those without a power supply. It is equipped with 20 laptops, 20 smartphones, VR headsets, and 4G Internet Wi-Fi. Each course provides 40 hours of training in skills such as using computers and the Internet to write a resume, finding and applying for jobs online, starting an e-commerce business, and online safety. It has in the last three years trained nearly 3,000 Kenyans as part of Huawei’s TECH4ALL initiative.
The DigiTruck project is run in close partnership with national and county government agencies, including the National Youth Council, the Communications Authority of Kenya, which provides content relating to online safety; GSMA, which provides smartphone training materials; and Safaricom, which provides Internet bundles so that students can access Wi-Fi on the DigiTruck via Huawei’s 4G CPE. It is driven under Huawei’s long-term TECH4ALL digital inclusion initiative, which aims to leave no one behind in the digital world.
“Huawei runs many programs aimed at improving the capabilities of Kenya’s ICT talent and building a stronger ICT ecosystem with a goal to train 10,000 ICT talents in Kenya each year for the next three years,” said Steven Zhang, Deputy CEO of Public Affairs for Huawei Kenya. “The Digitruck provides basic digital skills to youth in rural areas and runs alongside other advanced ICT courses for university students such as Seeds for the Future and ICT Academy.”
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