In August 2020, the government of Benin announced a project to create a fiber optic school. 2 years later, due to its new aspirations, the project was reviewed and transformed into digital schools.
The Minister of State for Development and Coordination of Government Action, Abdoulaye Bio Tchané (photo, center) presided over the official inauguration of Benin’s School of Digital Professions on Monday, October 3. The school housed in Cotonou, the economic capital, was born in place of the fiber optic school. This had been designed to train the workforce necessary for the deployment and maintenance of very high-speed networks as well as the development of digital uses in the economy.
“At its meeting of August 19, 2020, the government authorized the implementation of the project for a Fiber School which, in view of the government’s ambition, has become the School of Digital Professions”, recalled the president of the board of directors of the school, Mathias Affomaï.
It is therefore from the ashes of the fiber school project that the new school of digital professions was born, with the mission of creating a reference model for the countries of the sub-region in terms of practical professional training for digital professions. The public institution offers short-term practical professional training adapted to the needs of Benin’s digitization project and the job market in general.
“The fiber network, the data center and the e-services that the Government is developing will only make sense if they can be developed by qualified internal skills,” adds Mathias Affomaï.
For the commissioning of the new school, the government has mobilized funding of nearly 530 million FCFA (806,331 dollars) from its financial and technical partners, in particular the government of France and the company Sofrecom, a subsidiary of the Orange group.
For the Beninese authorities, this school aims to serve as a benchmark in West Africa. The creation of the school is all the more important as it constitutes an essential pillar for the implementation of Benin’s digital inclusion ambitions and the success of its flagship project, which is to generalize the use of digital technology by education and training.