Safaricom Digital Academy aims to enable Kenyans to take advantage of the opportunities available for the next digital market space.
“We have been in the business of building radio networks, and selling voice, data and fintech services for the past 18 years and have developed the best skills in this part of the world,” says Thibaud Rerolle, CTO at Safaricom (Vodafone group).
“But tomorrow will be different in a world driven by AI, 5G and Digital. As leaders, we have a responsibility to create bridges to a meaningful future for our employees and avoid dead-end careers driven by the obsolescence of some of our legacy technology,” he adds in a LinkedIn post on how Safaricom Digital Academy’s vision emerged.
He was reflecting on how his vision was becoming a reality with 60 employees of Safaricom joining the pioneering class to actualise it.
Back in early 2018 as we were planning for the next steps of Safaricom #DigitalTransformation, I realized that we could do better in terms of skills. When it comes to skills needed for the future of an organization like Safaricom, the immediate solution is to get talents from outside the organization, which we have done successfully in the past, taking advantage of the incredible pool of talent that Kenya and the Silicon Savannah has to offer.
This, however, didn’t seem right vis-a-vis our existing workforce. In line with our commitments to SDG8-Decent Work and Economic Growth, as well as in accordance to our 100% Human at Work ambition as part of the B-Team, I was inspired to think differently and to offer a fair transition to the digital future for our staff.
According to Thibaud, the academy’s program is based on a hybrid model of learning, delivered in part through external partners (Strathmore, Moringa, Huawei, Edureka) as well as from internal faculty of experts.
“In the next 6 months, 60 employees of Safaricom will join an in house developed program covering 7 essential domains of our digital future. After initial basic course on Cloud computing, Cyber Security, Mobile & Web App Devt, Dev/Ops & Automation, Data Science and Analytics, Future Network Technologies (5G, SDN, IoT, NFV, ..) and Agile & Design Thinking, each student will specialize in one field, and then deliver a 3 month project for the business before being able to join digital jobs in the organization and contribute to the digital transformation of the company.”
