MTN has launched an artificial intelligence enabled Job Board feature on its Skills Academy platform, timed to coincide with International Youth Day as part of the company’s continued push toward digital and economic inclusion across its African markets. The new feature gives learners access to job opportunities, high demand courses and skills guidance within a single platform, extending the Skills Academy’s existing focus on training into the realm of employment matching and career progression.
What distinguishes the Job Board from conventional job search platforms is its integration of learning, job discovery and application tracking into one connected system. Rather than simply presenting a list of available roles, the feature is designed to help learners understand how their current skills align with what employers are seeking, and to identify specific courses that could help close any gaps between their existing capabilities and the requirements of roles they are interested in pursuing. This approach reflects a broader industry recognition that job matching alone is often insufficient without a clear pathway for candidates to build the skills employers are actually looking for.
The initiative responds to a demographic and economic reality specific to the African continent, which remains the world’s youngest, with more than sixty percent of its population under the age of twenty five. Despite this large youth population, many young people continue to face barriers to employment even as demand for digital and technology related skills continues to grow across various industries. The International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, has estimated that more than 230 million jobs across sub-Saharan Africa will require digital skills by 2030, a projection that underscores how extensively digital capabilities are expected to reshape the future of work across the region and reinforces the importance of connecting training more directly to actual labour market demand.
Marina Madale, MTN Group Executive for Sustainability and Shared Value, said this year’s International Youth Day theme of different contexts and common aspirations captures the reality the company observes across its markets, where young people start from varying circumstances but share a common need for relevant skills and clearer pathways to opportunity. She said strengthening the connection between skills development and actual employment requires coordinated action across business, government and education sectors, and that the Job Board gives further practical expression to the company’s broader commitment to digital and economic inclusion by linking learning, skills and opportunity within a single system.
The Job Board is currently available across eleven markets where the MTN Skills Academy operates, featuring vacancies from employers throughout Africa and recommending relevant roles based on each learner’s skills, location and stated career goals. Users are able to browse and filter available opportunities, review specific job requirements, save vacancies of interest and track their progress through the application, interview and offer stages, with the platform recommending relevant free courses through the Skills Academy in cases where further development could strengthen a learner’s suitability for a particular role. Launched in 2022, the Skills Academy has already recorded close to 526,000 enrolments, 192,000 course completions and 1,122 specialisations completed across its eleven operating markets, with certified digital certificates available to help learners demonstrate credible, authenticated achievements to prospective employers. The platform also incorporates accessibility features designed to support learners with visual, cognitive, neurological, mobility and age related needs, reflecting the company’s stated commitment to digital inclusion for people of all abilities.
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