Bridging digital skills divide next frontier for growth

When I joined policymakers, educators, and industry leaders at the World Bank Skills for Jobs Policy Academy 2025 in Nairobi in October, one message came through powerfully: Africa’s future competitiveness will depend not on its natural resources, but on how effectively it nurtures digital talent.

Across the continent, and indeed around the world, the shortage of skilled professionals in fields such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and data science has become one of the defining challenges of our time. The 2025 IDC Whitepaper on ICT Job Roles and Skills in the Intelligent World paints a sobering picture. Even in countries with advanced education systems such as China and India, traditional models of learning are struggling to keep pace with the speed of technological change.

Globally, the gap between the creation of digital jobs and the availability of skilled talent continues to widen. The IDC report estimates that 36 million new ICT roles will be created in the coming years, yet many will remain vacant. More than 65 per cent of enterprises report delays in digital transformation initiatives due to skills shortages. Cybersecurity roles are among the hardest to fill, with only 14 per cent of organisations saying they have sufficient talent in this area. In artificial intelligence alone, nearly 4.2 million roles remain unfilled worldwide.

Digital transformation

These shortages do not only affect individual companies. They slow down innovation, limit productivity, and weaken national competitiveness. For Africa, where digital transformation is critical to sustainable growth and job creation, bridging this gap is not just an educational goal — it is an economic imperative.

Part of the challenge lies in the structure of our education systems, which are still largely designed for a pre-digital economy. Curricula remain static even as technology evolves rapidly, and graduates often leave university without the practical skills employers demand. This creates a frustrating paradox in which we have high youth unemployment on one hand, and acute shortages of ICT professionals on the other.

Solving this mismatch requires a new kind of collaboration between government, academia, and industry. The discussions at the World Bank Academy highlighted a growing recognition that education and employment can no longer operate as separate worlds. Instead, universities and technology companies must work hand in hand to co-create learning programmes that combine academic knowledge with real-world experience.

This emerging model of partnership moves beyond traditional sponsorships to a deeper form of collaboration that integrates updated curricula, technical enablement, and continuous exposure to industry practice for both students and faculty. It reflects an understanding that education must be dynamic, responsive, and closely tied to market realities. Such partnerships can be effective.

Africa’s digital future

For example, working closely with the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy and the Ministry of Education, Huawei has developed initiatives that blend classroom learning with industry experience. The ICT Academy, for instance, partners with universities across Kenya to equip students with hands-on technical skills and globally recognised certifications. The DigiSchool initiative integrates digital literacy into early education, while the Professional Development Training Program (PDTP) provides civil servants and ICT professionals with advanced training in networking, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.

Just this year, more than 380 trainees graduated from the 2025 Presidential DigiTalent Program after completing certification training, gaining practical skills directly applicable to Kenya’s fast-evolving digital economy. Similarly, through the Global ICT Competition, 16 Kenyan students and lecturers participated in advanced training and global exchanges that deepened the transfer of technology and expertise into local institutions.

These programmes demonstrate that closing the digital skills gap is not a short-term project but a long-term investment in Africa’s prosperity. To succeed, we must approach skills development at three levels. First, governments need to treat digital skills as a central pillar of national development, ensuring that education, innovation, and labour market policies are aligned. Second, universities must become agile learning institutions that constantly update their teaching and research in response to technological change. Third, private companies must transition from being passive consumers of talent to active partners in shaping the skills ecosystem.

Africa’s digital future will not be built by chance. It will be built by skills, by partnerships, and by purpose.

The writer is the Head of ICT Academy at Huawei Kenya