Ingressive for Good (I4G) has partnered with Coursera to offer scholarships to 5000+ African youth in tech as part of its commitment to upskill and increase the earning power of youth in tech. The partnership is part of Coursera’s global roll-out of the Workforce Recovery Initiative, where any state and country can provide citizens with free access to online learning.
According to a statement, this builds solidly on I4G’s goal to train one million African youth in tech for free and bridge the tech skills and opportunities gap in Africa. In line with this, Ingressive for Good teamed up with Coursera, the world’s leading online learning platform.The programme aims to develop high-demand skills in areas like personal development, technology, and career development. It includes access to highly sought after professional certificates like the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, designed to train people with no tech background for IT jobs.
In this report by Payscale, a tech employee earns 2x more salary than a peer in a non-tech role. However, access to tech, tech training, and resources are expensive. This discovery led Ingressive for Good to find ways to make tech training accessible for free to African youth and place the trained youth in jobs.
The response to this opportunity was proof that there is a big need for it. Over 20,000 African youth applied in less than one month. So far, over 5,000 young people have been trained over a six-week period with access to over 4000+ courses from leading universities such as Yale, Michigan, and Stanford, as well as industry leaders such as Google and IBM.
Blessing Abeng, the Director of Communications at Ingressive For Good said, “In less than two months there have been over 24,793 enrollments, 43,014 learning hours spent, 46,047 lessons taken, and over 100 people placed in jobs. We have had so many success stories and the response is really wonderful.”
A beneficiary of the programme shared her experience: “My name is Folashade Fapohunda. I am an accountant. I studied accounting in school. I had a job in a hospital as an accountant but COVID19 cases started increasing and we were at risk. The company closed down and I had to resign. I casually picked up an interest in Graphic design and I started looking for opportunities in design. That was when I came across the I4G Coursera program. I enrolled in the Coursera design course and I learned so much about typography and many other things, I never knew about before.
“These courses gave me the confidence I needed to start freelancing and so far, I have had over three paying design clients. I felt totally empowered. In fact, I still feel empowered. The I4G Coursera program has helped me cement my learning in graphic design for free, courses that were cumulatively worth thousands of dollars were given to me on a platter of gold. I never thought I could be this good at graphic design. I realized that when you open yourself to opportunities, you can always be better. There are so many opportunities and if you don’t get plugged in in the right places (like I4G), you will miss out and never know how much better you can be. I am completely transformed. I4G has transformed me.
“I4G is a wonderful platform and I advise you to follow everything they do across every platform because your life will be better. You will be completely transformed in 3months or 2 months or even 1 month. Take advantage of the network.”
“Coursera is honored to support I4G in its commitment to upskill African youth.” said Anthony Tattersall, Vice President EMEA at Coursera. “Through access to high-quality online learning, young people will be able to gain the critical skills needed to swiftly enter the workforce, as well as explore new careers in technology.”
This partnership has impacted young people living in Subsaharan Africa, to access courses worth thousands of dollars for free. You too can benefit from other Ingressive For Good opportunities, just join the I4G Network of over 17000 tech enthusiasts across 55 cities across Africa.
Ingressive For Good is a non-profit organisation dedicated to creating and increasing the earning power of African youth through tech training and resources.
For more info, partnership or donation, contact: Blessing Abeng, Director of Communications, Ingressive for Good on communications@ingressive.co
Detailed Statistics about the I4G Coursera programme are available here.
Coursera was founded by two Stanford professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, with a vision of providing life-transforming learning experiences to anyone, anywhere. It is now a leading online learning platform for higher education, where 75 million learners from around the world come to learn skills of the future. More than 200 of the world’s top universities and industry educators partner with Coursera to offer courses, Specialisations, certificates, and degree programs. To date, Coursera has partnered with over 2,400 companies, including more than 100 Fortune 500 organizations on their skills development goals. Coursera is backed by leading investors that include Kleiner Perkins, New Enterprise Associates, Learn Capital, and SEEK Group.