Sun Microsystems has announced a partnership with Asia’s leading technology training provider NIIT that will support the development of talent in Africa. This initiative is part of Sun’s commitment to improving and expanding grass-roots skills in IT in Africa.
Says Ottmar Kugelmann, chief learning officer of Sun Learning Services for Southern and Eastern EMEA, “NIIT and Sun run such programmes very successfully in several locations around the world. We are proud to announce that programmes are now being rolled out in Africa.”
“In these programmes Sun Learning Services training material around Solaris and Java will be integrated into the curricula for students,” he continues. “The programmes will be rolled out initially in 30 training centres in Nigeria, targeting several thousand students with the aim to get them to Sun certifications level.”
For the first scholarship programme, a student selection process took place in Nigeria where 70 000 applicants took part. Sun will work with NIIT to get the message out and raise the awareness of the programmes.
“We plan to extend the initiative to many more countries in Africa,” states Kugelmann.
NIIT was founded in 1981 and has many years of experience in providing training services to developing countries in Asia. The company offers learning and knowledge solutions to five million students across 32 countries.
“Sun’s Java and Solaris are amongst the fastest growing technologies adopted worldwide today,” says G Raghavan, president, Individual Learning Solutions business for NIIT. “NIIT’s global alliance with Sun has enabled us to bring NIIT’s renowned instructional design and the latest curriculum in Sun’s technologies to thousands of Nigerian students through our NIIT centers located across the length and breadth of this vast African continent. We are proud to play our role in producing global professionals from Nigeria through this alliance with Sun.”
Skills have been highlighted as a major area of focus for development by African governments. Sun is committed to meeting the demand for skills in Africa and believes this partnership will be part of a successful talent transformation in the region.
