About the Initiative
The President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, announced the African App Launchpad initiative within the closing ceremony of the World Youth Forum (WYF) 2018 on Nov 6, 2018 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
The African App Launchpad (AAL) initiative is an Africa-wide platform aiming to build capacity of Youth from Egypt and other African States and foster establishment of sustainable startups in the area of the advanced ever-changing app and game technologies.
AAL targets to build capacity of 10,000 young calibers and support the establishment of 100 startups in gaming and app development across all Africa. AAL works by availing a high-quality, technology-learning online platform through crowd-sourcing top online content developed by prestigious universities and leading companies, and delivered through three leading MOOCs; Coursera, edX, and Udacity.
Objectives
- Building capacity and certifying young African calibers on the recent advances in app and game technologies.
- Supporting creation of job and business opportunities for the African youth through wage employment, freelancing, and startup establishment.
- Increasing the competitiveness of African ICT companies by availing an abundant talent pool.
- Forming Africa-wide learning networks in leading technologies to act as platform for fostering technology innovation and entrepreneurship.
Benefits
- Free top-quality learning track in one of the advanced app and game technologies.
- Prestigious international certificate after successfully completing the learning track.
- Potential chance to attend a local learning group to experience cross learning and discuss business impact of the underlying technologies.
- Opportunity to join startup competitions where each winning startup is awarded USD 2K in additional to possible seed fund or incubation service.
- Being informed of Africa-wide employment opportunities.
Eligibility
- Citizens of each officially participating African state can apply through the initiative website.
- Applicants are accepted as learners subject to fulfilling the following criteria:
- A higher-education college graduate of year 2006 at most or will graduate within 2 years (by 2021). Can access all tracks.
- Non-ICT applicants and junior university students are eligible for some introductory tracks. If non-ICT applicants are interested in other ICT tracks, a good knowledge of essential ICT technologies is recommended through the following:
- Min. 2-years work track in ICT.
- Min. 6-month international training record in software technologies.
Governance and Management
The AAL is an international initiative led by the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology under the overarching Presidential Initiative, the Next Technology Leaders, mandated to the Ministry. The AAL is executed by a work group headed by the Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (TIEC) of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) of Egypt. The AAL Work Group has one focal point from each participating African state.
The responsibilities of a focal point of a participating African state concerning its citizens are as follows:
- Promote initiative within its African state.
- Answering initiative queries of its own citizens.
- Screening the applicants of that state to select learners.
- Monitoring performance of the enrolled learners and motivate them for completion.
B5, Cairo Alex Desert Rd., Smart village,Giza, Egypt.
AAL@tiec.gov.eg
Facebook.com/AALaunchPad
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