The North-West University's (NWU’s) NWU-CoLab, in collaboration with the National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa (NEMISA), the Mahikeng Digital Innovation Hub (MDiHub) and the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT), recently launched a Community E-Skills project.

The project – a brainchild of the DCDT – aims to provide community members with the opportunity to improve their skills by funding several selected online short courses offered by Coursera. (Coursera is a global online learning platform that offers anyone, anywhere access to online courses and degrees from world-class universities and companies.)

NWU-CoLab spokesperson, Dr Aaron Tshidzumba, says the partnership is the product of an agreement between the NWU vice-chancellor, Prof Dan Kgwadi, and NEMISA’s CEO in 2015.

“The year before the launch of the project, NEMISA, in collaboration with IBM, conducted research on the shortage of ICT skills within the North West Province. This research report recommended that the province should focus on improving people’s ICT skills to support agriculture and tourism. These skills include website design, computer literacy, social and digital media skills, among others,” says Dr Tshidzumba.

He adds that this year the NWU-CoLab has managed to purchase licenses from Coursera, Amazon, Microsoft and CISCO with the support of NEMISA and the DCDT.

 “The courses are free of charge, and we encourage people to register and make use of this wonderful opportunity to improve their skills.”

To find out more about the courses available, please follow the steps outlined in the poster below.

More about NWU-CoLab

The NWU CoLab is an e-skills project of the School of Communication Studies in the Faculty of Humanities, and this is not its first community initiative. In 2019 and 2021, in partnership with MDiHub, the NWU-CoLab ran an ICT Hackathon for four North West Province district municipalities.

The NWU-CoLab was also involved in the deputy vice-chancellor for: community engagement and Mahikeng Campus operations’ vegetable garden project for schools. As part of this project seven primary schools around Mahikeng were – with the help of final-year agriculture students from the Mahikeng Campus – assisted with boreholes, water pumps, water tanks, garden nets with poles, and seedlings.

NWU-CoLab spokesperson, Dr Aaron Tshidzumba.