Orange and online education platform OpenClassrooms have signed a broad-based partnership to provide digital training in Africa.
Several Orange subsidiaries in Africa are already working on the launch of training centres providing online courses via OpenClassrooms.
The duo point out that to rise to the challenge of the digital revolution in Africa, students and teachers alike need to be trained in the new technology. There are two objectives for countries in Africa: to use digital technology to boost growth, and to focus on new sectors of business that create jobs.
In both cases, it is necessary to train young Africans to ensure the economic development of the continent in the decades to come and avoid the brain drain of strategic skills for its development. By 2050, the African population will double to reach 2.5 billion, half of whom will be under the age of 25, according to estimates by the UN. Investing in education, in particular e-education, is an absolute priority to overcome the lack of physical and technical infrastructure.
To support Africa in this major project, Orange and OpenClassrooms, prominent in French-language online education, have combined forces to form a broad-based partnership to train young Africans in digital technology.
The partnership between Orange and OpenClassrooms will be formed on two levels:
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The students will have access to the OpenClassrooms courses via the mobile network. The courses can be followed on the student’s smartphone for subjects that don’t require a computer (Understanding the web, The network, Big data, Bitcoin etc), or on a computer with Internet access via the user’s smartphone for instance, for courses on programming
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Digital training centres will be established based on the OpenClassrooms diploma with “Guaranteed employment” commitment, with the help of local partners, whose premises will be used as training and examination centres.
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The courses are made up of series of texts, videos, and quizzes. The smartphone courses are designed to be easy to access, encourage the sharing of knowledge between students, and also user friendly and optimised for data consumption.
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The cooperation will rely on local Orange entities in Africa and the Middle East, in association with African partners such as the Virtual Universities and young African start-ups. Other agreements will follow with other institutions and partners in the field of education and online digital technical and professional training in French.
