THE Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) and the ICDL have signed an agreement which will see tutors trained in international certification for digital literacy.
Professor Emmanuel Luoga, the NM-AIST Vice Chancellor, signed the training of trainers’ agreement on behalf of the university, while Mr Peter Maina, the ICDL Regional Manager for Africa, signed it on behalf of the global enterprise dedicated to raise digital competence standards in the workforce, education and society.
Prof Luoga was optimistic the agreement would go a long way in complementing the NM-AIST School of Communication Science and Engineering which incorporates ICT Resource centres.
These include the Centre of Excellence in ICT for East Africa which enrolls students from across the region by quota, the Centre of Excellence in IT and the Centre of Excellence in Competence in Digital Education.
According to Mr Maina, the ICDL training goes beyond digital basics with three categorized modules, namely ICDL Workforce, ICDL Professional and ICDL Insights.
The ICDL Workforce category offers digital skills for employability and productivity, giving students what the industry needs well before they graduate, said Mr Maina, adding that the category also enhances productivity of people who are already working by reducing working time.
“A professor scrolling a PDF file during a presentation instead of letting students read themselves and an accountant with a calculator, cellphone and a computer scattered on the table need the ICDL class,” Mr Maina said.
The ICDL Workforce category comprises Essential Skills modules, namely Application Essentials, Computer and Online Essentials, Computer Essentials and Online Essentials.
The category also comprises Office Applications modules of Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentation as well as Good Practice modules of IT Security, Online Collaboration and Data Protection.
The ICDL Professional category, which offers digital skills for occupational effectiveness, comprises Creative modules of advanced Presentation, advanced Documents, Web Editing, 2D Design, 3D Design and Image Editing.
Also comprised in the category are Entrepreneurial modules of Digital Marketing, Project Planning and E-commerce as well as Computational modules of Management Spreadsheets, Financial Spreadsheets, Data Analytics, Coding Principles, advanced Database and Using Data.
The ICDL Insights category targets business managers who are not IT professionals by providing them with conceptual understanding of trending and emerging technology.
Contained in the ICDL Insights category are modules of Digital Understanding for business managers, Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and Big Data.
ICDL will also introduce Industry 4.0 and Blockchain modules in the near future. Industry is a term encompassing the trend towards automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies and processes.
They include cyberphysical systems, the internet of things, industrial internet of things, cloud computing, cognitive computing and artificial intelligence, and blockchain.
ICDL, which has been raising digital literacy for over 25 years in over 100 countries globally, over 30 in Africa, including Tanzania, partners with institutions like NM-AIST to build the capacity of trainers for them to train others.
Its standard certification offers the trainers the content which ensures a student at NM-AIST has the same capacity as the one in Singapore.
ICDL so far boasts certifying over 17 million students globally. “It’s an insufficient percentage to the population of 7 plus billion people,” Mr Maina said.
Its main offices are in Dublin, Ireland, for Europe, Panama for Americas, Rwanda for Africa and Singapore for Asia.
