atingi (www.atingi.org), the digital learning platform of The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has exceeded expectations in its first year.
Within twelve months, atingi has reached almost a million people in Africa and already enabled 100,000 of them to access vocational education and self-development courses for free.
atingi means “to achieve” in Esperanto, and the platform strives to improve the employability of young people through modern digital learning opportunities.
With a large network of strategic cooperation partners – from politics and business to science and civil society – educational content which meets the needs of African audiences is made available, free of charge, via the atingi platform.
Although atingi is developed for people in all German Development Cooperation partner countries, the current focus is specifically on facilitating African economic growth.
BMZ has chosen four pilot countries for a more intensive engagement, recognizing that each is in a very different stage of digital transformation – and is, therefore, suited as a test case to identify opportunities for pan-African scaling.
The close cooperation with the pilot countries Togo, Niger, Rwanda and Benin, enables atingi’s learning proposition to be dynamically evaluated, adapted and targeted to local needs.
atingi is an innovative digital pioneer focused on helping Africans unlock their potential
Africa is recognized as a potential global workforce hub for the rest of the world because of its high youth population.
In fact, by 2030, Africa will be home to more than a quarter of the world’s population of under 25s, and 15% of the world’s working population.
To date, the lack of access to high-quality education for its working-age citizens has been a critical inhibitor of African countries ability to compete effectively in the international labour market.