Draft
The SDGs that address quality education and decent work are inherently linked as low education levels lead to worse employment and economic outcomes. The education issue is vast with varying needs across a student’s lifecycle. In particular, one current opportunity to improve training opportunities for youth and at the same time improve the availability of decent jobs is digital skilling.
In particular, IFC has identified the African digital skills market as a $130B opportunity due to the economic growth across the sub-continent as well as the rapid demand for a more skilled workforce. At the moment, youth rates of unemployment vary from 10-50% across the country with even more youth classified as working poor.
Andela has developed a compelling business model innovation that in essence reorders the way in which training is done, de-risking the process of digital skilling for students. Instead of a traditional model in which a student applies and pays for education and then goes and looks for a job, Andela applicants are guaranteed 3-5 years of work at a technology company. It is fully sustainable model with big-name tech companies paying for the software development done by Andela employees. Alum of the program go on to work for these companies or start their own businesses.