Google’s initiative to train young people to develop mobile applications aims to help 2,000 graduates by October 2016, Google regional chairman in the Middle East and North Africa Mohamed Mourad said.
The first phase began with the graduation of 250 youths last week, Mourad said, noting that trainees are provided with online training courses through a specialised platform in Arabic. This helps it spread among a wider range of youths and helps develop the Arabic content, which represents only 1% of total online content.
Offering the training through an online platform makes it more available to youths, especially with the spread of smartphones in the Egyptian market, with almost 50m devices, he said. About 75% of beneficiaries of the programme so far are university students, with 100 graduates provided the chance to study economy and business administration to be able to start their own businesses.
The initiative to empower the youth for creativity and business administration in mobile applications aims to develop emerging technological projects to empower young developers to obtain jobs in the local market. The initiative provides 2,000 scholarships to encourage creative thinking in the technological field to empower youths by providing them with the tools and knowledge needed to begin their careers professionally.
The initiative includes offering a training course for three months about the means of developing Android applications. In the course, trainees are provided with international certificates. The initiative also includes a number of activities to connect creative youth and trainees with investors and workers in the field of mobile applications technology to provide them with excellent job opportunities or partnership and alliance contracts.
These trainings are made in cooperation with Udacity platform, which specialises in online trainings, as well as MOOCs, which turns content into Arabic. The success rate among Egyptian application developers using Udacity for online training reached 80% compared to the international rate of 10%.
