Capacity-building & Digital Literacy
Another important component of capacity building is the use of the Atingi e-learning platform, which is being used to pilot approaches to self-paced learning in Rwanda. Registration and use are free for all students, entrepreneurs and professionals. Content is regularly developed and made available on the platform. Courses range from career guidance for students, financial and business skills courses for entrepreneurs, to skills enhancement for professionals to work more efficiently.
Digital Ambassadors Program
The Digital Ambassadors Program is an initiative led by the Rwandan Ministry of ICT and Innovation aiming to increase the number of digitally literate citizens and their use of e-government and e-business services. The Digital Ambassadors manage Services Access Points in all 30 districts in Rwanda and offer digital literacy skills to citizens.
Through a competitive application process, 93 Digital Ambassadors were selected to go through a training program from 14th December 2020 to 12th February 2021. During this period, they received support enabling them to turn their ideas into sustainable businesses. The support from MINICT was critical to equip the Digital Ambassadors with what essentially served as a start-up kit of assets as well as an enabling environment to run their digital business:
Access to Resources
such as laptios, internet, office space and a fully equipped training room
Customer Service and User Training
on the Rwanda government services available through Irembo
Revenue Generation
through commissions from Irembo transactions as well as Mobile Money services transactions
IoT & Machine Learning Trainings
Training the next IoT-Innovators of Rwanda
Emerging technologies like IoT come with endless new opportunities for Africa. Consequently, there is a need for highly skilled IoT-innovaters all over the continent. That is why the DigiCenter is hosting workshops to train Rwanda’s IoT-professionals of tomorrow.
Enabling Rwandan Communities to solve Real World Challenges through Machine Learning Trainings
Artificial Intelligence developers and innovators are in high demand on the job market. Therefore, our trainings support skilled newcomers to gain knowledge in machine learning and enable them to create new products and services.
Public Sector Training & Coaching
In order to sustainably transform Rwanda into a digital and knowledge society, the public sector needs the capability to strategize and implement ICT projects in the country. For this purpose, the DigiCenter has facilitated training and on-the-job coaching to members of MINICT, RISA, NIRDA, RDB and other public actors on e.g. project management, code & design and system architecture. One of the main goals of these trainings was to strengthen the capacities of the public sector to realize the Smart Rwanda Masterplan. The DigiCenter recently assessed the impact of the trainings provided with 70% of the participants stating to have improved or greatly improved to implement the Smart Rwanda Masterplan.
Artificial Intelligence Fellowship program
The AI Fellowship program aims to bridge the gap between academia and the private sector when it comes to AI skills. In partnership with the Technical University of Chemnitz in Germany and Leapr Labs, the DigiCenter is currently supporting 15 fellows through a 2-step process.
First, the fellows undergo a 3-months intensive training to acquire AI-related skills. In a second step, the fellows are matched with a private sector or government institution, where they will practically apply their skills on a specific AI project selected by the institution.