NITDA calls for applications for Cohort 3 of digital training

…Graduates 8,000 Nigerians

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has called for applications for Cohort 3 of its digital training.

The agency in a statement yesterday stated that the training which is executed in partnership with Coursera is in line with the Agency’s drive to implement the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda to create one million digital jobs in the Information Technology sector.

Recall that NITDA and Coursera on October 19, 2022 launched a partnership to help combat high rates of youth unemployment, which stood at  19.6 percent in 2021, with both parties intending to train 8,000 Nigerian learners annually in a cohort of 4,000 learners each for a total of 24,000 in 3 years.

Coursera provides NITDA’s selected learners with access to world-class educational contents from top universities and industry leaders – including Yale, Meta, Google, and IBM. Coursera will support the Nigerian government in improving the technical capabilities of the country’s youths and develop Information Technology talent. The collaboration is Coursera’s first government partnership in Nigeria.

Partnering with Coursera will give Nigerian learners access to Coursera’s Professional Certificates portfolio, which are designed to empower learners to gain the skills necessary to pass an industry certification exam or launch a career in a specific field, such as IT support within three months.

Coursera’s 32 Professional Certificates are explicitly designed to facilitate entry into high-growth careers, including Data Analytics (Google), Social Media Marketing (Meta), and Software Developer (IBM). These roles are due to enhance an increasing share of the Nigerian labour market, which expects 3 million digital jobs to be created in the next four years.

The Agency has also disclosed that a total of 8,000 Learners have graduated from Cohort 1 (4000) and Cohort 2 (4000) in the first year of the partnership.

“Beneficiaries range from students, Government workers, entrepreneurs and academics. In the 2 Cohorts, there were 43,745 enrollments in different courses with learners completing 16,374 courses which indicates that each learner enrolled an average of five courses.

“The distribution of skills developed based on 3 domains are Computer science (31.83 percent), Business (35.73 percent) and Data Science (32.44 percent). The feedback from learners with an average rating of 4.8/5.0 signifies Nigerians enthusiasm in digital up-skilling on the Coursera Platform. Additionally, a recent study by Business Insider Africa has found that Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s highest year-on-year average growth rate for people enrolling for professional courses, with Nigeria ranking third globally.

“The Cohort 3 skills will focus on the 3 million Tech talent (3MTT) initiative of the Federal Ministry of communication, Innovation and Digital Economy as listed; Software Development, UI/UX Design, Data Analysis & Visualisations,Quality Assurance, Product Management, Data Science, Animation, AI / Machine Learning,Cyber Security, Game Development, Cloud Computing and Dev Ops.”

The agency announced that applications will close by the 10th of February 2024 while urging interested Nigerians are invited to apply through via the link: https://links.nitda.gov.ng/coursera2401