IBM develops skills for rosy opportunities in Africa

IDC market researcher predicted that information-technology spending in sub-Saharan Africa rose 9.9% in 2011 (year-on-year growth from 2010) to cross the $23 billion mark, there will be an even larger hunger for IT-trained workers in the very near future. IBM launched the IBM Africa Institute in Kenya, a skills enablement initiative aimed at broadening IT skills in 10 African countries in 2012.

The initiative was flagged off in Mauritius in July 2012. Kenya is the next country on the calendar and the Institute is currently running training in Strathmore University that started on 21st August 2012 till the end of the week. The free training which targeted 200 attendees will cover streams on Hardware, Tivoli, Web sphere, ICS and Information Management.

IBM Africa Institute was initiated as a response to IBM customers demand for greater investment from IBM for skills in the territory. It is a technical enablement initiative targeted at IBM customers and potential customers, business partners and the academia with an objective of bringing IBM technical education closer to the customers. The key objective of the initiative is to accelerate IBM technical skills in the region with an aim of getting brand ambassadors at the technical level who will influence the buying decision of IBM.

CIO East Africa spoke to Dr. Mark E. Dean is Chief Technology Officer of the Middle East and Africa (MEA) for IBM about IBM involvement in developing skills for Africa. Dr. Dean is responsible for technical strategy, technical skills development and exploring new technology based solutions for the region. These responsibilities include the development of solutions specific for the emerging needs of the businesses and cultures in industry segments such as mobile services (banking, healthcare, education, government), natural resource management (oil, gas, mining, forest, water), cloud based business services, and security (fraud protection, risk management, privacy, cyber security).

Why are you here Dr. Dean?

There are a lot of opportunities, if you look at the growth of Africa, the level of population in the continent, the amount of new businesses, the adoption of new capabilities, it is attractive to IBM and many other companies and for us to get these opportunities we need skills.

Skill is one of the constraints that lack to support and drive opportunities. This kind of skills is not enough for Africans to innovate for Africa, this continent is unique from other parts of the world, and the way businesses are channeled is completely different, like for instance in China, Brazil and India which are other areas IBM had to develop skills. IBM needs to work with African nations to develop the kind of knowhow to tap new opportunities, for example the mobile device, in Africa it is widely used to communicate and transact, which is not true in the developed world.

In other aspect Africa is very rural in general although there is a significant movement into cities and that is why we are going to do research in the area of smarter cities, because they are developing rapidly and they have challenges in water and transportation, we therefore think there is a opportunity to optimize these systems for the growth that is happening in the Africa cities.

So it is basically if you are going to grow a company, or a career you need skills, the knowhow, innovation, to build unique solutions for the environment that you are working in and the ambition, the want to make a difference. Africa has the want, however the skills are what need to be impacted to get at all the growth and with the right skills, innovation is breed.How long did IBM take to come up with the curriculum that best fits this market?

Well, the institute curriculum is a standard delivery; there are multiple levels of skills that need to be developed in any growth market. The training that will go on for the few days is what I call entry level knowledge, it will deliver basic knowledge on IBM technology, and it will help students with awareness to start applying IBM technology in addressing business opportunities.

There is a level above which is a research level, so we will start to work within the university curriculum which is more of a long delivery plus it will engage in research of interest areas. Then there is the basic skills level, basic programming, Java, just a basic system knowledge.

So IBM has three level skills that it brings to help people across the board, the technician level skill, then the mid level skills used to apply basic technology to solve a problem and the higher level innovation skill that can be impacted into university undergraduate and post graduate level. Today we are working at the mid level skill.

You have just spoken about benefiting the academia, what is IBM's cut in thisWe need to hire people, we expect to grow significantly, both here and the East Africa community in general and we need skilled staff. It is better to have local population in the company from the region you are operating in, and for us to do that we have to make sure that the skills in the region match our needs and there is just not enough high level under graduate and post graduate level skills out of the universities to fill all the positions in the region.

IBM wants also to feed all our customers with the same skills, because as we sell to them opportunity and capability, they need skills within their own shop to use them so it's not just IBM hired skills, it's the banks, the mining industry, the oil companies, it's the telecoms. The government can also hire the same skills that we need so that we can start to address similar opportunities. Once we deliver they already have skills to understand the same opportunities by acknowledging and deploying even further.

The training is not only for our own benefit but also the clients as well, the more clients grow the more we grow. It is that simple, if their business doubles we also grow, so we have to get focused and spread the opportunity spectrum.

If you can just share with me, what current technology innovation tickles you?

I get engrossed to the hand held device. I think the cell phone will liberate many people from the constraints of not having access to information; it is amazing what is going to be possible by this little device that we carry in our pockets. I think it will replace the wallet, it will replace everything I have in my wallet today, my driver license, credit card, all my pictures that I would carry with me, my money so anything that I put in my wallet, the cell phone should deliver it. In fact it will be more secure than my wallet, if I lose it will take me forever to recover from the loss of my wallet whereas if I lose my cell phone it will take me an hour to recover, because I can turn the cell phone off and disable it and the company will get me a new one and have it delivered with my information in an hour.

So I think this device is going to be used for new opportunities for example as an address, people can know where I am, and many people living in the rural areas don't have an address, they can't run a business or order something because of lack of an address. So if I can give them a cell hone and a capability of being found through technology I provide them with an address, so they can order for goods and services to be delivered to their cell phone number. The delivery person can just track them and make the delivery then transact business.

I hope in my life time we will see this device that we carry in our pockets essentially be our identity, and it will liberate a lot of people.