MTN Group has signed an industry partner agreement with the international Digital Skills Academy in a move to upskill its staff and fast-track its customer service channel development.
MTN will partner with the Dublin-based Academy to deliver broad-based training and on-site experience to the academy's BSc programme participants in South Africa.
"As a corporate client, MTN will also uplift the digital capabilities of its own working professionals through the academy's internationally acclaimed practice-based professional learning programme," says Paul Dunne, CEO of the Digital Skills Academy.
Mteto Nyati, CEO of MTN South Africa, says the agreements will support the telecoms giant's transformational projects, primarily around its customer services and digital strategies.
"The partnership with Digital Skills Academy aligns with our aims to develop the necessary skills to transform our service delivery. We want to significantly transform the way we interact with our customers through our various channels, and we will be using these new skills to help us up our game within that space. The initiative will help to upskill key MTN staff, which will help us to retain key talent in a market where we have huge shortages, as well serving as a form of recognition for our top performers," Nyati says.
He adds: "It will also be beneficial for us to have people coming from outside our company and looking with fresh eyes at our challenges and giving us feedback, and out of that helping us to come up with clear plans that we can execute."
Nyati notes that digital skills development is crucial in South Africa, particularly in the cloud and analytics spaces. Programmes such as the Digital Skills Academy BSc course will help the country build these much-needed skills, he says.
Liam MacGabhann, Ambassador of Ireland in South Africa, was in attendance at the signing of this high-profile industry partnership. "Ireland is a strong global performer in skills development, education and eLearning. It is encouraging to see new doors opened for increased collaboration and knowledge sharing between Ireland and South Africa in this important sector," MacGabhann said.
Globally, Digital Skills Academy works with a number of large corporate brands to offer relevant, cutting-edge industry experience as part of its internationally acclaimed training programme.
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