Africa Has a Digital Skills Gap that Needs to be Bridged Urgently

The future of work is digital and only those who possess the right digital skills will excel. In Africa, however, there is a wide gap between the digital opportunities that exist and available skilled talents. This is a major problem, one that Tobi Asehinde is trying to solve with his startup Digital Marketing Skills Institute (DMSI). We recently visited with him at his Ikoyi office to learn more about his digital agenda for Africa as well as to discuss other wide-ranging topics.

BEA: It’s nice to meet you Mr Asehinde. DMSI is doing a lot to bridge the digital skill gap in Nigeria and across Africa. Tell us more about the journey so far. 

Tobi Asehinde: Let me begin with how the whole idea of DMSI came about. While I was studying in the UK some years ago, I started a hotel booking website with my flatmate. Around the same time we started, I went to the USA for my brother’s graduation. Being a typical startup founder, I wore my company’s branded T-Shirt to the graduation ceremony. Interestingly, this caught a lot of people’s attention.

Read our full interview with Tobi Asehinde HERE

People were curious to know what the T-Shirt was about and I would proudly tell them it’s my startup. They would then check out the website and the next thing they want to know is if I could help them build a website. They actually assumed I was the one who built the website myself. Well, I didn’t tell them that I didn’t build the website, nor did I admit building it. Interesting thing is that before I left America, I got two people that were willing to pay me $1000 each to build a website for them. And so by the time I returned to the UK, I sat myself down and started learning how to build a website.

The thing is that is that I realized that there was an opportunity here. People are constantly on the look-out for people with digital skills. Unfortunately, there is a huge gap between those in need of digital marketing services and those with the talent. From the onset, I had a company called Vibeweb Solutions. We were rendering different digital marketing services to clients. But we couldn’t work for everybody.

Our prices were also a little steep. We thought to ourselves ‘what better way to make a greater impact than to replicate ourselves in other people’. And that was what inspired DMSI. So, we started to train people on how we do what we do and expose them to the opportunities around digital marketing. We also have a platform that connects our students directly to these available opportunities.

Read the full interview HERE