Deputy Director of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Capacity Building Center, Dr. Azeb Tadesse has called for the prioritization of digital skills as necessities for the future of jobs in Africa.
She made the statement for the call at a monthly seminar held by the Department of Distance Education of the University of Ghana on the topic: “A comparative analysis of online learning and face to face instruction at the University of Ghana”. Through her findings, Dr. Tadesse emphasized on the importance of digital skills, as she predicted these skills as requirements for jobs and opportunities in the future.
“Digital skills are the future of jobs. You have about 30 million jobs disappearing on the continent, and about 230 million jobs by 2030 in Africa are going to require some level of digital skills. Digital skills are divided into basic, intermediate, and high, with basic being just the operation of some of the most common software, such as Word and converting a file into PDF; intermediate being able to use enterprise-level software; and advanced being coding and artificial intelligence (AI).”
She went on to explain that artificial intelligence (AI) has totally taken over the technical world as she noted that it requires greater attention in order to grasp the benefits it provides.
“Even with digital skills, things have changed. I would venture to say that since the last survey that was taken on artificial intelligence (AI), which was in 2020 and 2022, AI has completely taken over. So maybe not necessarily coding anymore, but we could be looking at prompting, and we could be looking at people filing intellectual property on just being able to ask a computer to do a certain activity or skill.”
The monthly seminar was held by the Department of Distance Education under the College of Education as part of one of its numerous programs in celebrations of the University of Ghana 75th Anniversary.
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Story by | Kuuku Osei-Baidoo | univers.ug.edu.gh
