Bridging the gap between innovation, and education and skills development: Policy makers, entrepreneurs, researchers and Kenya’s digital creatives have their say Part 2

One of the highlights of GESCI's policy forum on innovation and skills development (held end of January in Nairobi, Kenya), was the presentation of research on the use of technology, skills development, learning models for innovation and employment in the knowledge society. Mary Hooker of GESCI presented the context for the research, which looked at the role of informal learning environments in the development of 21st century skills for innovation and enterprise in East and Southern Africa. More specifically, the research asked what 21st century skills do youth need in order to function as participative citizens of a Knowledge Society? It also endeavored to identify the skills required by the growing creative digital media industry in the 21st century, and how digital creative media skills are being developed in Africa, and what role innovation hubs can play in their development? According to recent studies on the needs of employers, critical thinking and problem solving, information technology application, and teamwork/collaboration, are the top three basic skills required of employees in a modern workforce. Ms. Hooker revealed further research findings concerning the role of creative industries in the development of economies, a role that is increasingly recognized as important, as changing consumer behaviour is becoming more and more favourable to the growth and development of DCM industries. Plenty of examples were presented of African DCM products, such as Kenya’s Tinga Tinga animation series and the Legend of Ngong Hills, but skills gaps, Ms. Hooker reported, are still gaping within the areas of technical, marketing and entrepreneurial skills. The findings and conclusions imply that a positive and supportive regulatory environment is needed to promote DCM industries; that education needs a re-think and that national curricula should holistically include 21st century skills and DCM skills and that there needs to be adequate investment in DCM industries. Read the full research and Executive Summary here. Ms. Shikoh Gitau, the winner of the AKE research competition, presented her research project entitled Designing Ummeli. Ummeli is an Nguni word for mediator or bridge. The Ummeli platform that constitutes the centre of the research by Ms. Gitau was created as a technological mediator to connect young people from marginalized communities in Cape Town to employment opportunities through their mobile phones – enabling them to create CVs, browse and apply for employment online at affordable costs (see Designing Ummeli portal at: www.ummeli.com). Ummeli growth was spread by word of mouth, and even outgrew the research’s control community to the whole of the cape flats. Working closely with groups of unemployed people to identify their greatest challenges in applying and securing work, Ms. Gitau, married this to information she collected on employers’ hiring needs, which enabled her to support job applicants in the creation of CVs online. Ms. Gitau said that the model would only be scalable with investment from private or government partners. Mr. Mathias Antonsson, AKE project manager, presented on GESCI’s DCM skills development innovation project which took ran for 12 weeks until the end of January 2013. He explained how the purpose of the innovation pilot was to create a body of expertise around how ICT TVSD skills which could feed into policy at a national and regional level. The idea was party inspired by the alarming percentage of unemployed youth, many of whom possess latent creative talent which could be harnessed into practical DCM skills in a short space of time, thus lifting some of them out of a potential cycle of unemployment and poverty. New jobs for unemployed youth will not necessarily be found in big industry, such as manufacturing, but rather within small knowledge based operations. Mr. Antonsson explained that it is about know-how and ability to perform, and how to turn a skill into a micro-enterprise. A curriculum that is normally delivered in formal learning institutions over the course of at least a year was condensed into a practical 12 week training programme designed to develop latent talent in students with varying degrees of competency in DCM. Another major objective of the course was to guide students through the end-to-end process of producing a finished DCM piece of work. Too often DCM artists struggle to get from initial ideation and experimentation to a client-ready finished product. Through a process of cross-collaboration of DCM skills, each of the four groups (animation, gaming, digital music, and graphics/new imagery) lent their skills to the other groups to complete the final projects, thus simulating real-life end-to-end DCM work. The remainder of the forum featured a number of panel discussions on skills development, entrepreneurship, policy development, and innovation hubs. GESCI CEO Jerome Morrissey also gave an interesting talk on Ireland’s rise from DCM obscurity in the early 90s to its phenomenal success today as the world’s second biggest animation producer. Throughout the forum participants worked together to identify policy recommendations for skills development, innovation, futures perspective, and they also recommended areas of future research. The recommendations were multifarious and covered needs assessment, ICT integration, education and training, the role of institutions, networking and information flow, investment, governance, pedagogy, mentorship and many more subjects. See the full list of policy recommendations here. Dr. Swarts brought the workshop to a close in her final remarks thanking all participants for their contributions to the policy forum discourse and indicating that the forum would now be followed with a series of documentation releases to be delivered by the African Knowledge Exchange over the next few months. For all AKE forum presentations please visit this page on the GESCI website: www.gesci.org/science-technology-and-innovation.html For further information please contact niamh.brannigan@gesci.org