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PMI Says Strong Partnerships Are Required To Bridge The Gap Between Education and Employment
Non-profit professional association and global advocacy group for the project management profession, Project Management Institute (PMI) has recognised that linkages are required between education and employability so that young skilled Africans are able to deploy their skills in formal employment where available or create their own opportunities through effective entrepreneurship. As the future of work becomes more projectised, project-based skills will become essential to helping changemakers turn ideas into reality and overcome complex challenges.
PMI predicts the global economy will need 25 million new project professionals by 2030. In its Talent Gap report, it attributes this demand to an increase in the number of jobs requiring project management skills, economic growth, and retirement rates.
A shortage of this critical skill could pose considerable risk to organisations as they rely on project teams to implement strategic initiatives on time and on budget. Globally, the talent gap is being exacerbated by the post- pandemic ‘Great Resignation,’ which has seen workers quitting their jobs.
In Africa, however, “we observe the opposite trend,” says George Asamani, PMI’s Business Development Leader for Africa.
“The continent graduates around 11 million young people from schools and universities each year, according to Junior Achievement Africa. This presents the continent with an opportunity to leverage this demographic dividend to address shortages of project management professionals in the developed world – while also developing the project skills to help young Africans build the conditions for much broader economic participation at home.”
PMI has successfully partnered with universities in Sub-Saharan Africa to provide practical courses to help students while still at university to understand how to apply project management skills for delivery in the real world. Through a train-the-trainer model, lecturers and professorial staff at universities are trained to teach project management skills to reach as many students as possible across all disciplines.
“While some universities include these courses as part of their overall fees so that students receive project management training free at point of delivery, others deliver the training as additional pay-as-you-go courses. Regardless of how universities choose to build these critical project management bridges into their curricula, PMI provides 60% discounts on all certifications received by university students,” says Asamani.
PMI together with Microsoft has also built the Citizen Developer courseware available to partner universities or directly to individual students. Microsoft estimates that an emerging class of citizen developers will create 450 million apps over the next five years using software development dubbed “low-code / no-code”.
“The execution of all projects today relies heavily on digital ability. 86% of IT decision-makers say the biggest challenge to digitally transform their business is too few developers. That’s where the power of citizen development comes in,” says Asamani.
In Africa, PMI has partnered with the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) which seeks to add US$ 10 billion to the African economy by creating 10,000 new businesses on the continent. PMI’s own research shows that one of the five most common causes of entrepreneurship failure is execution risk, or the inability to deliver projects successfully.
In response, and together with the TEF, “PMI has developed a webinar series that guides young African entrepreneurs build businesses and execute projects by successfully managing risk through ideation, strategy and delivery,” reports Asamani. The webinar series also supports young African entrepreneurs directly with mentorships provided through the TEF.
PMI also partners with the African Leadership Group, composed of the African Leadership Academy (ALA), the African Leadership University (ALU) and the ALX career accelerator to empower young Africans with project management skills.
At ALA, PMI works with undergrad students who during their first-year present ideas which are formally critiqued, marked and refined. During the second year, students work on delivering their ideas practically, supported by mentors through the PMI South Africa Chapter.
“Today, beyond education, where we are already doing a lot of work – we also need to find ways to work with government and the private sector to reach and empower a much broader segment of young Africans. All of us have a role to play in creating a more confident and readily employable workforce,” concludes Asamani.
Airtel Nigeria has reaffirmed its long-term commitment to strengthening Nigeria’s digital infrastructure and data access to bridge gaps in connectivity and unlock new opportunities in the country.
The company restated this commitment during a recent high-level inspection tour of the Nxtra Data Centre that is being developed through Nxtra by Airtel Africa at Eko Atlantic, Lagos, the highly rated smart city with ambition to become the Data Centre hub of Nigeria.
The inspection tour was led by the Chief Executive Officer of Airtel Nigeria, Dinesh Balsingh and the Chief Executive Officer of Nxtra by Airtel Africa, Yashnath Issur, with the esteemed chairman of Eko Atlantic Mr. Gabbi Massoud, the CEO of the lead Engineering firm Design Group Limited, Mr. Bayo Odunlami and tech journalists.
The Nxtra Data Centre went through a stringent design validation process and cleared the approval to proceed construction from Eko Atlantic.
Commenting on the developments, Mr Issur said the site visit was a milestone marker and an indication of the company’s commitment to delivering the world-class digital facility on time and ensure that, ultimately, the investments deliver reliable, secure, world-class services for Nigeria and the rest of the continent.
“This Nxtra Data Centre in Lagos represents a critical part of our long-term vision for Nigeria’s digital ecosystem. Today’s visit allows us to review progress, engage our stakeholders, and ensure that our infrastructure investments continue to meet global standards and local needs.
“This data centre will deliver critical high multi megawatt capacity in line with hyperscale customers and enable high density environment. We are putting the infra to bring the cloud to Nigeria,” he said.
The data centre, set to be the largest in Nigeria, is being established to deliver hyperscale and edge facilities across key African markets. With a load of 38 Megawatts, the Lagos facility is expected to serve as a major hub for data hosting, cloud services, content distribution, artificial intelligence, and enterprise solutions in West Africa.
In his remarks, Mr Balsingh reiterated that the data centre was progressing steadily towards the previously announced 2028 go live date.
“Since the announcement of this project, our focus has been on building a world-class facility that supports Africa’s digital transformation agenda. We are encouraged by the progress recorded so far and remain committed to delivering a secure, energy-efficient, and future-ready data centre for Nigeria,” he said.
During the tour, stakeholders were ushered through key sections of the site, including piling zones, where required structural requirements have been tested. Technical teams provided briefings on infrastructure design, security architecture, redundancy systems, and sustainability measures being implemented to ensure reliability and operational excellence.
Strategically located close to major fibre routes and undersea cable landing stations, the Eko Atlantic data centre is designed to enhance Nigeria’s data sovereignty, reduce latency, and improve access to reliable digital services for private and enterprise customers, significantly boosting the country’s data hosting capacity and supporting emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
Mr. Massoud noted that the inspection tour underscored the city’s dedication to infrastructure of global relevance.
“Eko Atlantic as a city with high quality infrastructure will contribute positively to boost the economy of Nigeria and is a perfect place for the development of the digital infrastructure of Nigeria. The Nxtra data centre reflects the calibre of projects we seek to attract — long-term, technology-driven investments built to the highest global standards.
Today’s visit affirms the rigour of the planning and execution process by Nxtra, and the commitment of Eko Atlantic to facilitate and promote the Nigeria’s evolving digital ecosystem,” he said.
Through this ongoing investment, Airtel Nigeria and Nxtra continue to demonstrate their commitment to building infrastructure that enables innovation, supports economic development, and accelerates Nigeria’s digital transformation.
Nxtra by Airtel is developing a network of hyperscale data centres across the continent. Besides Lagos, construction of a new data centre has also commenced in Nairobi, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Google has partnered with top African research institutions to unveil WAXAL, a massive open-access speech dataset aimed at giving over 100 million people across Sub-Saharan Africa a stronger voice in the AI future.
The initiative, announced Monday, targets a key digital gap by supplying high-quality data for 21 local languages, such as Hausa, Yoruba, Luganda, and Acholi. It includes 1,250 hours of transcribed natural speech and more than 20 hours of studio-grade recordings for advanced synthetic voice tech.
Voice AI has exploded globally, yet Africa’s 2,000-plus languages suffer from severe data shortages, sidelining hundreds of millions from native-tongue tech access. WAXAL, three years in the making with Google funding, changes that equation.
“This dataset lays the groundwork for students, researchers, and entrepreneurs to craft tech in their own languages, impacting over 100 million lives,” said Aisha Walcott-Bryantt, Head of Google Research Africa.
She highlighted its potential for African innovators to develop educational tools and voice services that spark economic growth continent-wide.
Community-led from the start, the project involved Makerere University (Uganda), University of Ghana, Digital Umuganda (Rwanda), and others. These partners own the data outright, pioneering fair AI collaboration models.
Covered languages: Acholi, Akan, Dagaare, Dagbani, Dholuo, Ewe, Fante, Fulani (Fula), Hausa, Igbo, Ikposo (Kposo), Kikuyu, Lingala, Luganda, Malagasy, Masaaba, Nyankole, Rukiga, Shona, Soga (Lusoga), Swahili, Yoruba.
WAXAL goes live today. Details at goo.gle/IntroducingWaxal.
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has unveiled its Q4 2025 Network Performance Reports, showcasing nationwide quality boosts fueled by over $1 billion in industry investments and sharper regulatory focus.
NCC
Speaking at the launch, Dr. Aminu Maida, executive vice chairman, NCC, hailed the Ookla-backed data as proof of NCC’s drive for transparent, evidence-driven oversight of Nigeria’s digital growth.
The reports track real-user experiences across cities, villages, highways, and nascent 5G areas, revealing faster median download speeds in both urban and rural spots versus Q3 2025.
Video streaming quality gaps between city and countryside have shrunk, thanks to a beefed-up 4G network—yet 5G rollout lags, upload speeds falter, and coverage holes linger in spots.
Maida said NCC is leaning on operators to fix these via spectrum tweaks, infrastructure drives, and stricter service rules, with 2025’s 2,850 new sites already paying off in broader reach and capacity.
Operators pledge even bigger spends in 2026 to keep the momentum, aiming for top-tier connectivity and economic inclusion for all Nigerians.
“We’ll turn these insights into real gains in service and access,” Maida affirmed, calling for sustained industry teamwork.
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