Samsung Pilot Programs Aim to Educate 10,000 Engineers

Even with its abundance of natural and human resources, Africa has been suffering a high unemployment rate due to a lack of skilled workers in growing industries, especially in the technical and engineering fields.

As part of the Corporate social responsibility program, Samsung Electronics runs an Engineering Academy in six countries including South Africa, Nigeria, Indonesia, Turkey, and Ethiopia. In March 2011, the first Engineering Academy in South Africa was established by Samsung to provide an educational hub for youth and foster talent who can address the shortage of technical and engineering skills.

The Engineering Academy leverages Samsung’s products and expertise to offer hands-on training to 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students from four local technical high schools, preparing them for future careers in the field. Consisting of two courses which are either a one or three-year program, the after-school academy is open for 2 to 3 hours twice or three times a week. Samsung provides training for service technicians to ensure continuous education and depending on the region, Samsung also provides building construction, equipment set-up, curriculum development support and internship at Samsung service centers and factories.

Engineering Academy aims to place 10,000 highly skilled electronics engineers in Africa by 2015. As of January of 2014, 38 out of 40 students have been employed as an engineer (20 out of 38 have been employed by Samsung) and the other two have enrolled in college.

We’ve included a chart below in case readers want to have a closer look at the school details.*

Samsung expects the Engineering Academy to support long term economic stability of regions.  It will do this by both providing technical job training leading to technology industry advancement and fostering the development of the next generation of Samsung service engineers to provide quality service to consumers.

A large scale initiatives such as the Engineering Academy require collaborative effort is a must as academic, government and industry partners need to come together to develop infrastructure, programs and curricula. With successfully implementation of the Engineering Academy throughout various schools in Africa, Samsung also has been able to build relationships with governments, NGOs and business partners for future B2B/B2G business opportunities.

Engineering Academies are another example of how Samsung has been focusing its effort on tackling a social problem and creating a foundation for the future with its expertise and resources.