The Future of Digital Work Depends On More Than Tech Skills

With the rest of the world’s population aging, Africa will become home to more than a quarter of the world’s total under-25 population by 2030. By the end of this decade, the number of people in the continent’s workforce is expected to have increased more than the rest of the world’s combined. That makes the region a major growth spot for digital talent and, therefore, a crucial source for economic dynamism worldwide.

Yet the continent is still producing relatively few workers with software and other tech-oriented skills. The problem is certainly not demand; it now has a substantial and growing tech sector. Africa has an emerging IT ecosystem, including a growing crop of digital entrepreneurs, startups, and innovation centers, and it is one of the fastest-growing tech markets in the world. Internet use has expanded greatly, with South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Tunisia, and Morocco leading the way. Tech giants based in the U.S. and China, including Alibaba, Huawei, IBM, and Microsoft, are making large investments in Africa. Homegrown companies, like eCampus, Interswitch, Jumia, Konga, M-Pesa, Paystack, and Rubies Bank, are also becoming key parts of Africa’s tech ecosystem.

With this booming demand for workers, some Africa-based companies complain of their inability to attract employees with sufficient digital skills. The continent needs more young people with the proper skills for digital work, but imparting the right skills to aspiring young African workers is often a challenge.

One solution is to use digital technologies to train young people remotely. This is a necessary approach, given that most Africans live in rural areas with limited educational offerings and variable internet access. Western tech companies have been motivated to develop low-cost internet solutions to tap into the huge workforce and achieve economies of scale. These companies have embarked on mass capacity- and skills-building programs for local workers, and now the Asian giants are following suit.

The good news is that so far, these low-cost, online courses are proving to be an effective means of delivering technical training. After a few weeks or months of instruction, trainees can work as software developers, without a college degree. Data science and business analytics are also popular areas of study. Trainees are entering what former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty has called “new collar” employment, which she expects to replace many blue-collar occupations. Instead of building and fixing pipes for the industrial economy, for example, new-collar employees can construct the infrastructure of our digital world.

The bad news, however, is that this widely accessible technical training is not enough to get most people truly ready to work in industry. They also need to develop soft skills, which are typically learned on the job and beyond the scope of most technical training.

Whether working as salaried employees or as gig workers, people need more than technical know-how; they also need skills in communication and collaboration, along with the real-world smarts and confidence that come from working on actual commercial projects. Key skills and attributes that increase employability in the tech space include self-motivation, the ability to apply skills in practice, a portfolio of successful real-world projects, external validation or certification of skills, a “go the extra mile” mentality, entrepreneurial creativity, interest in lifelong learning, research skills, professionalism, and proficiency in the English language.

As a corporate social responsibility executive at IBM, Remi Abere studied two separate training programs the company sponsored. The first served more than 6,000 students, most of whom were enrolled at universities in Nigeria and nine other African countries from 2014 to 2017. The three-week program used simulation software to train each student for one of a variety of tech roles: developers specializing in big data, mobile apps, and cloud-based apps; analysts of business intelligence, predictive analytics, and security intelligence; and data scientists.

Another offering, an IBM training program for a much smaller group of students, in 2017-18, offered 14 weeks of training in both technical skills — mobile application development and business intelligence — and softer, nontechnical skills needed in the industry, such as critical thinking and presentation skills.

Most students from the first training program graduated with solid technical skills, including an ability to code. But few of them directly entered employment. Many flitted between unemployment and one-off gig projects pursued through online outsourcing or independent contracting.

Contrast this group with students from the much longer second program, who had been trained over three months in both tech and employability skills and had worked on real-life projects during their training. They were over 70% more successful in gaining full-time tech jobs than were students from the three-week program. As the World Economic Forum has confirmed, the talent gap in the IT workforce is not purely due to a lack of technical skills but soft skills as well. People need to learn how to work with others, but these habits are hard to teach remotely.

The best way to attain these crucial employability skills is through apprenticeships or internships. Yet the supply of these opportunities in Africa is far less than the demand; even if every tech company on the continent doubled its current internship and apprenticeship programs, the capacity wouldn’t be sufficient.

Nevertheless, by stepping up their internship and apprenticeship offerings, African companies can boost their own digital capabilities, ensure their future success, and help develop the workforce of the future. Digital learning or collaboration platforms can also be part of the solution here in the absence of sufficient in-person learning opportunities. Kaggle, GitHub, Stack Overflow, and Topcoder, as well as gig-work sites such as Freelancer and Upwork, offer trainees needed real-world experience through the gig economy, helping them build employability skills. Trainees on these platforms can build project portfolios, attain expertise badges, and achieve other concrete markers that demonstrate practical experience.

These labor platforms are built on supply-and-demand interactions, and they offer robust reputation systems that penalize a participant’s misrepresentation of their skills. Skittish employers worried about hiring people who have never worked in an office building can thus view candidates’ project portfolios with confidence. Asking a prospective employee to complete a skills assessment can also help employers gauge softer nontechnical skills.

Employers will likely need to offer some coaching and mentoring to these digital-only trainees, but these efforts will be the finishing touch on the foundational training that these recruits have already received. While companies will always prefer candidates who have had in-person apprenticeships, these digital-only trainees will be better prepared for the workforce than those with only technical training. Over time, employers’ investment in training programs that involve softer skills and a more personal engagement with digital workers can nurture a stronger relationship and deeper trust between the company and its workers.

African companies will eventually build a generation of digital talent, even if they must rely on digital labor platforms alone. As more technical trainees gain employability, the African tech sector will spark a virtuous cycle of supplying the workers to enable companies to expand, which boosts local economies and the global economy — and attracts even more young people to regular and remote work. Whether global or local, companies need to think creatively about supporting employability in digitally savvy young Africans to power the future of technology worldwide.