Skills for Employability Program
Skills for Employability Program
The Skills for Employability (SFE) program is a five-year initiative of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) supported by Global Affairs Canada (GAC). The program aims to adequately meet Africa’s socio-economic needs by facilitating school-to-work transition for students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), through specialized trainings to make it easier for them to thrive in the labour market through professional employment or entrepreneurship.
Implemented in Senegal with a focus on the Francophonie region in Africa, SFE aims to contribute to improving the economic prosperity of the target populations through:
• Strengthening AIMS Senegal’s organizational management capacity in the delivery of skills development programs for employment;
• Increasing the employability of young STEM students by exposing them to employment-oriented skills programs that integrate gender equality, environmental concerns and meet the needs of the labour market or entrepreneurship;
• Building gender-responsive partnerships between professional development institutions and private sector companies, including women-led organizations from Francophone African countries.
Approach
- Supporting the Co-operative Master’s program, 200 trained.
- Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) will be offered to 2250 students. Through the African Virtual University’s digital platform, online courses are offered free of charge to students from the mathematics departments of 10 partner universities. The objective of the MOOCs is to enable students from targeted universities, as well as their peers from other universities to learn about opportunities for professional insertion available to anyone with a scientific background while giving them the tools and knowledge that will prepare them to become real professionals. Students receive digital certificates at the end of the training. The first MOOCs generated applications from 2,192 applicants, 35% of whom were women.
- The Post-AIMS Business Certificate (PAB) is a training course for AIMS alumni and non-AIMS students from Francophone universities, designed to prepare them for the labor market and to develop competencies relevant to entrepreneurship. Delivered by a qualified entity, the PAB handles several topics including entrepreneurship, professional development, self-employment, corporate structure, finance, and program management. Since its inception, SFE has trained 117 students in Senegal under two cohorts of the Post-AIMS Business Certificate, 40% of whom are women.
- Gender inclusion and outreach are key components of the SFE program, with an overall target of at least 30% women for all program components.