Capacity-building & Digital Literacy

The Digital Transformation Center is actively involved primarily in the areas of capacity-building and digital literacy. The target group ranges from people in rural areas, women and people with disabilities to ICT professionals, tech startups and employees of our political partner agencies such as MINICT, RISA and NIRDA. Moreover, the focus of each trainings varies. While some trainings are tailored to advanced expertise such as emerging technologies, other trainings focus more on advancing business aspects such as business modeling or user research.
Fraunhofer IZM Cerri Training at the Digital Transformation Center Kigali
Design thinking trainings for the Rwandan Community at the Digital Transformation Center Kigali

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

The Digital Ambassador Program taking place in Bugesera, Rwanda
The Digital Ambassador Program in Kayonza, Rwanda

IoT & Machine Learning Trainings

Emerging technologies like IoT and machine learning come with endless new opportunities for Africa. Consequently, there is a need for highly skilled IoT-innovators all over the continent. That is why the DigiCenter hosted several workshops to train Rwanda’s IoT and machine learning professionals of tomorrow. In total, 315 people were trained in 4-day courses.

Public Sector Training & Coaching

Trainings-for-the-public-sector-at-the-DigiCenter

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.

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