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Johannesburg - Hundreds of thousands of users across Africa have taken part in Google's digital skills programme, but South Africa has seen one of the lowest uptakes of the initiative on the continent.
Within a year, search giant Google says it managed to surpass its target to training one million Africans through its 'Digital Skills for Africa' programme.
The Digital Skills programme offers 89 courses through the online g.co/digitalskills portal. Google also works with 14 training partners in more than 20 African countries where it offers face-to-face training.
The programme more specifically targets small business owners, who are looking to better understand how to take advantage of the web across Africa.
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However, through the programme, South Africa saw the least amount of growth among three geographic focus regions as the country notched up just 70 000 users.
Meanwhile Nigeria saw over 450 000 users trained, Kenya had over 400 000 users, and 80 000 were trained collectively in other countries in Africa.
Addressing the low SA figures, Fortune Mgwili-Sibanda - who is head of policy and government relations for Google SA - said that key to the programme’s success was partnerships, of which governments in the rest of Africa participated more in.
“The office of the Vice-President of Nigeria was directly involved with the programme and the Kenyan government adopted the programme as part of their national youth service,” Mgwili-Sibanda said.
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He added that the figures from SA were disappointing.
“We have the resources we only need good buy-in from government. Maybe it is our fault that we didn't communicate it enough. We need the SA government for scale of the project. We are no longer going to knock at the door, we are going to bang,” he said.
Luke McKend, country director for Google South Africa, said that despite the low figures of South Africans, reaching the ambitious goal of training one million people was a milestone.
“Very few industries in the world can see this scale of growth. Despite connectivity problems in Africa, there are many opportunities for digital entrepreneurship in Africa,” McKend said.
Google set a target to train one million Africans in April 2016.
