The Centre of Excellence for Information and Communication Technologies in East Africa (CENIT@EA) is a regional innovation hub offering skills for the digital transformation in the East Africa Community. The centre entered its second project phase in the summer of 2021 with “Digital Skills for an Innovative East African Industry, dSkills@EA – CENIT@EA”.
To respond the concrete needs of the digital transformation in the region, the project partners established a market-driven master’s programme in Embedded and Mobile Systems (MSc EMoS) and offers short-term technical trainings for ICT professionals, unemployed graduates and university lecturers to provide them with the relevant digital skills. The trainings are offered throughout the EAC on topics such as Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, Machine Learning and Electronic Systems.
dSkills@EA - CENIT@EA offers full-time scholarships for currently three Cohorts consisting of 88 students in total from all EAC Partners States who are enrolled in the MSc EMoS for a period of two years each. The first cohort graduated in August 2021. The Master includes elements such as an internship, an applied Master thesis, Summer Schools, guest lecturers from the private and public sector, as well as Entrepreneurial and Soft Skills training. This enables the students to develop and market digital solutions, that are crucial for the transformation of industries and the development of the region
To assure this demand-driven and value-creating approach, dSkills@EA - CENIT@EA works very closely with the private sector through events such as ICT4Business and cooperation mechanisms such as the Memorandum of Understanding with IBM. The regional network and dialogue between academia, public, and private sector is furthermore facilitated for collaborative development of the digital transformation.
The partners behind dSkills@EA - CENIT@EA
The dSkills@EA - CENIT@EA project continues to bring together the expertise of experienced institutions in ICT research and teaching, internationalization and engagement. In addition to the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg (UOL), these are the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) in Arusha, Tanzania, as the host of the EMoS degree program, the University of Dar Es Salam (UDSM), Tanzania, the University of Technology and Arts of Byumba (UTAB), Rwanda, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Braunschweig, Germany, and the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences (HSM), Mannheim, Germany. In addition, Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg (FU), Germany, Moi University (MOI), Kesses, Kenya, and Kabale University (KAB), Kabale, Uganda, will be involved in the dskills@EA - CENIT@EA academic partnership. Implementation partners of the Higher Education Center are the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Inter-University Council of East Africa (IUCEA). Project sponsor is the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
