Microsoft And YES Develop An AI Skills Training Platform
Microsoft And YES Develop An AI Skills Training Platform. Microsoft has been a key player in YES, providing tech training to all the young people participating, as well as enrolling more than 800 participants as apprentices thus far. Now, in a new initiative, Microsoft and YES have developed a training platform that will provide AI skills to all the participants in the employment program. The platform includes an introductory course that paves the way for other, more advanced training in AI programming. Eventually, the hope is to have 300,000 participants in the course.
The new AI initiative is part of Microsoft’s broader efforts to address unemployment and the digital skills gap in South Africa and other African nations. The South African Statistics Department reports that in 2022 more than 63% of people younger than 24 were unemployed, and 42% of those 25 to 34 were jobless. At the same time, many South African companies are not able to find developers and programmers.
Ravi Naidoo, the CEO at YES, says the organization is a business-led response to the unemployment crisis in South Africa and to inequality in hiring. YES is funded by the companies that provide apprenticeships. The idea is to identify talented young unemployed people from disadvantaged backgrounds and get them the skills to excel in new jobs. About 42% of the YES participants are hired immediately after their year in the program, Naidoo says, often in the company where they were placed, and many more find jobs within months after. YES reports that it placed 25,287 young people in full-time jobs in the fiscal year ended March 2022. “We give them opportunities to get their first job in the private sector,” Naidoo says. “But with a focus on future-facing jobs and future facing sectors, because the more of them who are in the economy, the more they can start to have an impact.”
Adam Craker is the CEO of IQbusiness, which was one of the first 10 South African companies to join YES in 2019. He is an enthusiastic champion of the program. IQBusiness is a management consulting service for the banking, financial services, health insurance and telecommunications industries. More than 200 of the about 1,100 employees of IQBusiness are former YES participants.
“The one-year program is a very structured immersion into consulting, training, technology training, exposure to clients and project evaluation,” Craker says, adding that more than 95% of IQbusiness apprentices, through its YES-aligned intern program, end up with jobs in the company. It is “a very important part of our growth in terms of talent coming into the company.”
