Today, Coven Works – a company that educates millennials with in-demand skills and connects them with high paying jobs – announces a collaboration with the AWS Educate program from Amazon Web Services, Inc. This is to launch an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science boot-camp for 400 West African students, based in Nigeria and beyond, bringing the most in-demand skill-sets to the next generation of African builders and developers. Coven Works is building tomorrow’s workforce by empowering young people from developing countries with in-demand software engineering skills and matching them with high paying jobs.
Cloud computing and AI are #1 and #2 as the most in-demand skills on LinkedIn. Moreover, Gartner[ says that more than 70% of organizations will require A.I to assist employees’ productivity by 2021. Coven Works uses an intensive boot-camp and a 1-year fellowship to teach youths to be AI engineers and data scientists. The World Economic Forum (WEF) report on the future of work[ ranks these competencies high among skills needed for tomorrow’s jobs.
Coven Works has successfully trained 700 junior data scientists and AI engineers in four Coven Labs situated across Nigeria. The program yielded accolades, awards, and hackathon wins. The company will expand its scope in 2019.
Program Director for Africa at Coven Works, Dunsin Fatuase, says “These youths are from conflict regions in developing countries and are largely marginalized. Working with the AWS Educate program is a strategic move to improve the capacity of our AI engineers and add them to a global workforce with employers like JPMorgan, Salesforce, and Blackboard”.
Coven Works students will branch out to learn more on AWS Educate after completing the 6-week prerequisite in-class boot-camp. They will select from 11 cloud career pathways, complete the AWS Educate curriculum, and then Coven Works will work with them to set up job interviews. By working with AWS, Coven Works hopes to add 400 machine learning (ML) engineers to the global workforce. “This comes at a time where, there is a scarcity of quality developers” says Innocent Udeogu, Curriculum and Learning Lead at Coven Works. Of the 2.8 million tech jobs posted online in the US in 2017, only 48 percent were filled.
“As we travel around the world, ministers of education and workforce development keep pointing to the growing demand for cloud skills and the grand opportunity that we face,” said Ken Eisner, Senior Manager, AWS Educate, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “Through this collaboration with Coven Works, we are excited to provide the next generation of African builders and developers with the skills, hands-on learning, and pathways into the cloud and AI community.”
While speaking of the company’s aspirations, Coven Works co-founder Sola Amusan says the company will continue to focus in upskilling youths in disadvantaged regions, provide cutting edge learning in data science and AI for Africa’s working professionals and build tomorrow’s workforce. “Our program teaches resilience and global citizenship, and we are excited about this relationship with AWS”, he said.
The program will be available on www.covenworks.com/aws from February 14th 2019.