The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) in partnership with Coursera has opened applications from interested Nigerians to apply for Cohort 3 of Coursera courses.
This development is in line with NITDA’s drive to implement President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda aimed at creating 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% in 2021, with both parties intending to train 8000 Nigerian learners annually in a cohort of 4000 learners each for the 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 developing Information Technology talent, with the collaboration being Coursera’s first government partnership in Nigeria.
Digital TimesNG understands that partnering with Coursera will give Nigerian learners access to Coursera’s Professional Certificates portfolio, which is 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.
Mrs. Hadiza Umar, Head, Corporate Affairs & External Relations at NITDA said in a statement on Tuesday that 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 she said, 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.
So far, a total of 8000 Learners have graduated from Cohort 1 (4000) and Cohort 2 (4000) in the first year of the partnership, with beneficiaries ranging from students, Government workers, entrepreneurs and academics.
In the previous 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%), Business (35.73%) and Data Science (32.44%).
Umar stated that the feedback from learners with an average rating of 4.8/5.0 signifies Nigerians’ enthusiasm for 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,” she said.
Digital TimesNG understands that 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 below:
- Software Development
- UI/UX Design
- Data Analysis & Visualisations
- Quality Assurance
- Product Management
- Data Science
- Animation
- AI / Machine Learning
- Cyber Security
- Game Development
- Cloud Computing
- Dev Ops
Interested Nigerians are invited to apply through the link below:
Application Link: https://links.nitda.gov.ng/coursera2401
Umar stated that Applications start on Wednesday, 24 January 2024, while the Programme begins on 10th February 2024.
