digital-skills
(30)
Coderhouse puts the classroom back online
A Buenos Aires school took its classrooms online before the pandemic. Its bet was simple: people learn better when someone expects them to show up.
Technology HUB turned a consulate into a place to stay
In Ciudad Juárez, a former U.S. consulate now rents offices, teaches digital skills and helps local suppliers reach industrial buyers. The interesting business is what happens between those services.
PICTI learned that a startup needs more than a bright idea
Palestine’s nonprofit ICT incubator connects the unglamorous essentials: training, legal help, workspace and access to capital. Its history offers a practical lesson in building the conditions that let entrepreneurs work.
CodeBase bets that founders can be taught
An Edinburgh startup hub became the operator of Scotland’s £42.4 million Techscaler programme. Its next test is whether better connections and practical teaching can turn more young companies into businesses that scale.
Huzalabs knows AI needs more than code
The Kigali company builds software, trains the people who will use it, and helps businesses compete for contracts. Its most revealing lesson begins with 35 women and a change of plan.
Cabo Verde Digital buys founders time to build
A monthly stipend, a borrowed desk, a route abroad. Cabo Verde Digital treats the making of a startup as a practical problem - and is taking the same approach to digital access across the islands.
mLab Southern Africa and the work after the hackathon
A promising app is a beginning. mLab Southern Africa connects coding skills, practical work and startup support to help turn that beginning into a livelihood.
Christian Patiño and the school that began with six students
He wanted to start a technology business, but first he needed somewhere to learn. Christian Patiño built Coderhouse around that frustration - and is now bringing AI into a school still organized around human teachers.
AUPP Technology Center wants Cambodia to build what it buys
A university-linked technology center is putting Cambodian founders through the awkward journey from a good idea to a business. Its tools are decidedly practical: mentors, workspace, technical training, and a deadline.
Tech Cornwall and the art of making opportunity local
A robot that refuses to drive straight. A small firm without room for a trainee. Tech Cornwall turns these ordinary problems into routes towards a career close to home.
Simplilearn’s expensive lesson in doing less
A classroom shutdown once cost Simplilearn 75% of its revenue. Its subsequent history makes a useful case for knowing which customers you can actually serve.
The Computer That Worked Without the Internet Became a School for Making Games
Endless set out to put a useful computer in the hands of people with patchy internet. The harder lesson was that access to a machine is only the beginning.
Krishna Kumar Kept Rewriting the Lesson Plan
A project-management blog became a classroom, the classroom nearly became a liability, and the second draft became a global skills business. Krishna Kumar’s durable talent is not prediction. It is revision.
Smart Lab gets Tanzania’s startups into the room
A telecom partnership, climate grants and a new fintech challenge reveal how the Dar es Salaam company helps founders reach the people who can test, fund and buy what they build.
Impact Hub Harare is building the business after the bright idea
A promising prototype still needs customers, skills and somewhere to work. In Zimbabwe, Impact Hub Harare has made that awkward next step its business.
DIGITALENT’s bet: buy the schools, close the skills gap
A Spanish education group has brought business, law, coding and vocational schools under one roof. Its next test is teaching people to work with AI while keeping the classroom connected to the job.
HOPin Academy Is Building a Reason to Stay in Northern Ghana
In Tamale, HOPin Academy puts business coaching, digital skills and a footballer’s Plan B within reach. Its bet: young people should be able to build a future without leaving home to find one.
CREATIVA is taking Egypt’s startup map beyond Cairo
Egypt’s public innovation hubs bring training, workspace and startup support to university cities across the country. The interesting part is what happens between learning a skill and finding someone willing to pay for it.
Leaders International Wants Small Businesses on the Purchasing List
From Jordanian suppliers to Tunisian tourism, the nonprofit connects business support to buyers and jobs. Its projects show what that takes - and its accounts show the financial strain behind the work.
Kosovo’s startup scene needed a home. ICK opened the door.
Innovation Centre Kosovo brings founders, skills training and international connections under one roof. Its next test is making that support last beyond the donor cheque.
Ghana Tech Lab Wants Your First Business to Start in a Classroom
Free digital training is only the opening lesson. Ghana Tech Lab connects local classrooms, startup coaching and seed grants - with a practical question waiting at the end: will anybody buy what you build?
Tech4Dev’s free courses come with a bigger assignment: getting paid
The nonprofit behind Women Techsters pairs digital training with mentors, work experience and job matching. Its toughest lesson has been learning what keeps people in the classroom long enough to use it.
FutureMap Foundation Wants Tech Talent to Find Work Close to Home
In northern Nigeria, FutureMap Foundation is linking digital training to employers, local problems, and a community clinic. Its most interesting experiment begins where the classroom ends.
The Growth Hub sells a desk - and a way into tech
In Akure, The Growth Hub brings coworking, digital training, creative studios and business support under one roof. Its journey from a SalesPlat workspace plan to an iHatch host shows what a local tech hub can become.
QA Apprenticeships puts the day job on the syllabus
A Costa Coffee apprentice forecasting cup waste captures QA’s pitch: learn a technical skill, then put it to work. The harder part is making room for learning inside a working week.
Sara Leoni
Sara Leoni is the founder and CEO of Ziplines Education, a Bay Area career accelerator that partners with 30-plus universities to deliver industry-recognized certificate programs in fields like AI, project management, and digital marketing. A former Division I softball player at UNLV and ex-CEO of the $50M course-materials company Rafter, she raised a $6.4M Series A in 2023-2024 to help close the digital skills gap and has helped more than 20,000 adult learners retool their careers. She frames learning as a zipline: intimidating, exhilarating, and continuous, with a clear start and a clear landing.
Goodwill Industries International
Goodwill Industries International is the umbrella organization for a North American network of about 150 autonomous, community-based Goodwill nonprofits. Founded in Boston in 1902 by Methodist minister Edgar J. Helms, it runs the classic model of collecting donated clothing and household goods, reselling them through thrift stores and, increasingly, online, and using the proceeds to fund free job training, career services, and support programs. The parent body sets brand standards, coordinates national partnerships, and runs shared initiatives such as the online marketplace GoodwillFinds and the Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator, while local members deliver services on the ground.
OpenClassrooms
OpenClassrooms is a Paris-based online education company that turns coursework into jobs. Founded in 2013 by Pierre Dubuc and Mathieu Nebra out of the tutorial site Le Site du Zéro, it offers hundreds of free courses plus accredited, mentor-supported degree and apprenticeship programs in fields like data, AI, cybersecurity and web development. A certified B Corp with roughly 2.5 million monthly users, the company pairs project-based online learning with real-world work placements and a network of thousands of expert mentors, positioning itself as an education-to-employment platform rather than a video-course catalog.
Podium Education
Podium Education is an Austin-based edtech company that partners with colleges and universities to close the gap between a degree and a first job. Its flagship product, the Global Career Accelerator, is a for-credit, fully online program in which undergraduates of any major work on real projects for companies like Intel, L'Oreal, OpenAI and the GRAMMYs, build in-demand skills in data, marketing and coding, and collaborate with peers from dozens of countries. After acquiring the early-career talent platform Untapped in 2024, Podium now also connects its students directly to employers, turning coursework into a hiring pipeline.
Pieter de Villiers
Pieter de Villiers is the Co-Founder and CEO of Clickatell, the company that invented the world's first SMS API in 2000 with four lines of code and went on to pioneer chat banking and chat commerce globally. Based in Stellenbosch, South Africa, he led Clickatell to become the first African startup backed by Sequoia Capital, raised over $118 million in total funding, and built a platform that processes roughly 9 billion messages monthly for more than 10,000 enterprise clients across 220+ countries. He also chairs SiMODiSA, a non-profit focused on digital skills development and startup acceleration in Africa.