Skilling Africa With AI Opportunities

In Africa 44 million Small, Micro and Medium Enterprises, (ESMMEs) currently employ 80 percent of the continent’s workforce, and contribute 60% of the continent’s GDP. With that scope it is the only sector that realistically could curb Africa’s large unemployment and development deficits.

Speaking at today’s first ever AI Skilling day in Midrand South Africa, Colin Erasmus, COO, Microsoft South Africastated, “That’s why we’ve got to scale up SMMEs. People … with a great idea, you may want to start your own business and then gain innovation”.“This is a question that we ask ourselves every single day at Microsoft. The difference between skilling somebody and making them employable”.

The key for finding sustainable solutions to grow Africa’s economy , ad with it employment, is the need to be focussed on developing African innovators and entrepreneurs and Microsoft has committed to skilling over a million people in AI skills this year.

The remaining link in the employment battle would be turning the up-skilled people into employed or even better, entrepreneurs who can employ their own staff. 

Take a listen to Colin Erasmus’ insights on the future of AI skills – Click Below:

Cyber Security a big opportunity for AI skilled individuals. 

McKinsey’s latest Cyber security report predicts that by the year 2030, the AI industry will be worth 1.3 trillion dollars for the African continent, and that there are currently as few as 300 000 skilled AI workers in Africa, and a need for 2,8 million additional AI cyber security trained individuals who will be required to meet demand worldwide.

In addition to this, there is a great scope for new cyber security start-ups, that would have the has potential to grow the cyber security development industry in Africa rather than simply plugging employees into international cyber security companies.

Africa has a proud history of producing tech and security specialist companies, with the likes of Mark Shuttleworth, and more recently Sendmarc, the specialist email security start-up raised $7 million in Series A funding in 2023.

Secure D in Kenya, is another example that specializes in mobile cybersecurity, using advanced encryption and threat detection to protect mobile devices and networks. Its solutions are widely used by telecoms and mobile payment platforms in the country.

Improving your Hire-ability in Future

Microsoft’s Work Trend Index. research, indicates that 78% of business leaders today, are hiring people for AI roles, add to that the most in-demand jobs in South Africa today, are cybersecurity roles focussed around AI and data science.

AI is certainly changing the tech and corporate environment in what is likely to be one of the largest revolutions in human history and the future landscape for job hunters and entrepreneurs alike will not be divorced  from AI tech in some way.

Colin Erasmus concluded  saying “We’ve not seen so much innovation in the last 24 months as we’ve seen for years before that”.

Microsoft will also be launching a new version of its online AI training platform AI-Navigator on 1 July for the South African market, that provides Free AI training as part of Microsoft’s commitment to train 1 million individuals in AI skills. 

Their AI skilling initiative is a global one spanning 20 priority countries which were identified for Microsoft. Eleven of these sit across Europe, Middle East and Africa, and there are only two in Africa, South Africa and Kenya.