Into Africa
Embracing the cloud in the digital learning age.
Seven of the world’s ten fastest growing economies are in Africa and many believe Morocco is the business “gateway” for the continent. North Africa expects 4 to 5 percent GDP growth by 2020 and 6 to 7 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Experts project a population boom so large that by 2100, 40 percent of the world’s population will be African. The middle class is expected to triple from 150 million people in 2010 to 490 million in 2040. Africa’s workforce is projected to be 1 billion by 2040, the largest in the world. With about 10 million young people entering the labor force every year, youth will make up a large percentage of this.
CTU has been in the business of successfully developing and training thousands of people in South Africa for more than 20 years. In late 2014, CTU began strategizing its aim to replicate its prestigious training and development solutions to its neighboring African countries. It was then that CTU started to ‘plug-in’to its strong partnership with Microsoft and the 4Afrika team headed by dean, Lutz Ziob, in order to train and develop partners like Adapt IT, Signal Alliance, Space Age Technologies, Netopia, Ha-shem Network Services and others across the African continent on the latest Microsoft technologies.
Fernando de Sousa, who heads Microsoft's 4Afrika initiative, said "it's not just about networks, it's not just about PCs. It's about the end economic impact, it's about the skills.” He also stated that "in proving the value of technology as the enabler for that development, it's not just creating consumption of technology, but it's actually more importantly creating the ability for knowledge to be developed, for technology to actually be built in Africa.”
It has become CTU’s main objective to deliver training solutions that drive the IT ecosystem that drives the IT industry that makes technology relevant.
The Microsoft initiatives are built on the dual beliefs that technology can accelerate growth for Africa, and Africa can also accelerate technology for the world. Through CTU’s online virtual instructor-led training (VILT) delivered on the Skype for Business platform, we are able to upskill and develop partners across the African continent, any time, any place, anywhere. The flexibility of this project has allowed CTU to upskill more than 100 partners and Microsoft certified trainerssince 2015 on the latest Microsoft technologies including Office365, SharePoint Applications and Microsoft Azure.
In an interview with Lutz Ziob, dean at 4Afrika, he commented “when we at Microsoft need training for ourselves, for our partners, for our customers very naturally we turn to our Microsoft Learning Experience Partners within the Partner Network. We know that we get high quality innovative training on the latest technologies with our partners. But it’s one thing to be sure to get the latest technology training, it’s another thing to find training that uses technology itself to innovate on learning.”
Microsoft had the challenge to roll out training that is highly impactful but at the same time, very agile and scalable. They turned to CTU Training Solutions to customize a Microsoft based solution offering, enabling delegates to participate in virtual live classes anywhere in Africa from any venue at any time.
We delivered a virtual classroom approach together with Microsoft 4Afrika. The delivery of CTU’s virtual instructor-led methodology combines the mentoring and coaching of a live instructor, with Microsoft technologies and tools such as DMOC (digital Microsoft official courseware), MLO (Microsoft Labs Online) delivered through Microsoft Skype for Business where recordings are easily accessible after every intervention on Microsoft OneDrive. In addition, students are challenged to complete their certification exams within 30 days of receiving their vouchers. To help students better prepare for the international Microsoft exams, we request that they consume online MVA (Microsoft Virtual Academy) content creating a flipped classroom effect. The more tools our students have the better their chances of passing their exams, becoming certified and eventually deploying and consuming the Microsoft technologies. In some cases, it helps them create better solutions for their own customers as a result.
At the end of every training session our delegates are asked various poll questions using Skype for Business to engage with customers in real time to get feedback on training delivered. We evaluate the success of our training methodology afterwards through Metrics that Matter, in which case CTU has scored an average of 7 out of 10 for training delivered virtually across the continent.
We want to see people adopt technology and actually use it. In that way we are adding value and that’s what CTU is about. We asked some of our customers about the kind of experience they obtained during our virtual instructor led training sessions. Denis Ngahu, Solutions Architect from Alternate Ltd in WECA responded, “for sure it's difficult trying to get time to attend training for a week. The virtual courses were surely a welcome idea. I believe the training has equipped me with all I need to certify and come up with solutions. I will definitely sit the exams soon. I think in terms of what we were able to apply in our business, it's more to do with the automation of tasks in an Azure environment. If I were to say the one thing I've been able to learn, it would be the development of apps in Azure and the use of continuous integration with Visual Studio Online. Can't wait to apply this when we start building our own IP. Actually quite excited about the prospect.”
Microsoft established the 4Afrika Academy, an education platform leveraging both online and offline learning tools, to help Africans develop both technical and business skills for entrepreneurship and improved employability. Training through the 4Afrika Academy started in March 2016 at no cost to recent university graduates, government leaders, and the Microsoft partner community.As a result of our ongoing commitment to the Microsoft 4Afrika initiatives and successful online pilot training interventions, CTU was selected to deliver the training and development of 48 interns across various countries in Africa. We are empowering these unemployed graduates with in-demand business and technology skills through our online virtual instructor-led methodology.
During a follow up interview with our expert instructors, Sytze Visser and Leonie Prinsloo, they said “it is truly an experience, the “coming of age” virtual instructor-led training (VILT) of the digital age in Africa. It’s real-time, underpinned by the Office365 platform for the creation and delivery of voice, video and Office documents and content.
Our VILT sessions are scheduled with Outlook on the Office365 platform, delivered real-time via Skype for Business utilizing a live video and voice feed, as well as presenting PowerPoint decks. Session files are recorded and stored on OneDrive, and made available to students directly after each session. All discussions via IM on Skype for Business are stored in the presenters’ Outlook inbox for easy reference. Student progress reports, attendance registers, assignments and case study registers are created via Office365 tools and stored on OneDrive.
Over time, the history of each student captured, becomes a complete digital record of student activity. Student support, remedial action and interventions can be taken where necessary to ensure success of the individual students based on student records.
The exciting part of delivering training in this fashion is that the student experience is very positive. They are actively engaged in the experience and the value delivered to them is evident from the comments and survey responses we received.
Thanks to the Microsoft Office365 platform, a great advantage is that we can deliver the training from anywhere to anyone. I can be in Cape Town one day and in Johannesburg the next day without affecting training continuity – we could even have different facilitators in different locations. Likewise, students have the flexibility of training location, avoiding travel time and costs.”
We asked the question, how do we govern our educational offerings in Africa to ensure that teaching models improve and offer opportunities for learning beyond the norm? As Africa continues to be a hotbed of growth and innovation, the demand for a talented workforce increases. In partnership with Microsoft, with its 4Afrika initiative, we are able to create learning environments that feed the labor pipeline, preparing students throughout the African continent for a more productive future. CTU has always embraced certification as one of the biggest validation of skills says CEO, Ronald Meeske.
These training interventions with Microsoft and the 4Afrika team has helped us unlock new business opportunities, such as Avanade that is an international endeavor set to take place in Europe, Asia, North and South America, training individuals on the latest Microsoft technologies through our virtual instructor-led training platform.
Avanade is the leading provider of innovative digital services, business solutions and design-led experiences, delivered through the power of people and the Microsoft ecosystem. They help clients with IT solutions that deliver business outcomes in areas such as CRM, .NET application development, data and analytics, collaboration, ERP, infrastructure and offer flexible deployment models on-premise, outsourced, cloud or a hybrid.
CTU Training Solutions is developing customized Avanade specific Microsoft course material that will be delivered to Avanade technicians globally – in 2 different time zones. This courseware is developed according to specific course outlines set by Avanade. The technologies and focus areas to be delivered include:
•Skype for Business
•Windows 10
•SQL Server 2016
•Windows Server 2016
•SharePoint 2016
•Azure App Service
•DevOps Fundamentals
Once the courseware is developed and approved by Avanade, a CTU facilitator will train the Avanade technician via Skype for Business in 2 hour increments, according to a schedule.
The technicians will log into Skype for Business from wherever they are in the world, and will be trained for the designated time, before going about their daily business.
Engaging with Microsoft South Africa has provided us the opportunity to grow our business and flourish in a very disruptive and competitive market. In essence, going into Africa has been one of CTU’s greatest accomplishments and success stories since its inception. CTU has gone from delivering virtual instructor-led training to WECA, to upskilling Microsoft partners across Africa (on the latest Microsoft technologies), to finally customizing virtual instructor-led training for a global market.
We are winning new customers against the competitors every day. The University of Technology use to claim their SATV (Microsoft software assurance vouchers) with our competitors. In 2015 they started claiming these with CTU instead. We mediated meetings with our customers, took Microsoft teams along and won customers like Britehouse (a leading supplier of Digital, Automotive and SAP solutions) and Smollen because we were seen to be a go to partner for learning solutions.
Furthermore, customers like Mint (a Microsoft exclusive Information, Communication and Technology business partner) runs their own internship programme which they fund and chose to partner with CTU. Their students completed the MCSD certification with CTU and completed their workplace experience at Mint.
SA Rope employees attended Microsoft project training as they recently implemented Microsoft 2013 in their business and the project training is beneficial in rolling out successful new client contracts they secure.
Orderwise (is an electronic pharmaceutical procurement system designed to dramatically simplify the ordering system). They attended and completed their international certification in MCSA Windows Server 2012.
CTU customizes its experience and learning solutions to suit the needs of our customers. It is because of this that CTU has won so many new customers in 2015. We will continue to grow our customer eco-system because of our services, footprint and the ability of being flexible in terms of the solutions that we offer.
Our training in Africa has helped us to change our focus slightly to the development of youth and teachers to bring them relevant training and certification. Improving the access and quality of education.
When it comes to empowering learners with technical and business skill sets, Pretoria-based national CTU Training Solutions represents the new age in skills acquisition - one defined by blended learning, virtual, customized tuition and recruitment-centric customer experience. Source: ITWeb
The need for certified labor and skilled professionals with the ability to immediately enter a business, provide short-term ROI and add value, is such that traditional training methodologies simply cannot cope. Equipping the workforce of the future and helping those already in the market with relevant expertise, calls for service providers who offer an all-round approach – a total breakaway from the linear, traditional ‘chalkboard and books’ methodology to one underpinned by the Internet and software.
In November 2015, CTU Training Solutions was awarded a 2015 Top 20 IT Training Company. This came from demonstrating excellence in many areas, including:
- Leadership and innovation in IT training
- Breadth of IT training and delivery methods offered
- Company size and growth potential
- Quality and number of clients/users
- Geographic reach
- Awards, recognition, and competitive differentiation
There is a Swahili proverb that says: utajiri, kamamatumiziyake , anakujanamwisho ; kujifunza, kamamatumiziyake , kuongezeka which means: wealth, if you use it, comes to an end; learning, if you use it, increases.
We focus on creating a 21st century educational experience in Africa: looking beyond enrollment numbers to coursework and methodologies to find solutions for the CTU and Microsoft mutual customers.