The EAC’s Digital Skills for an Innovative East African Industry (dSkills@EA) project aims at strengthening employment and innovation-related digital skills of young people in the EAC Partner States.
dSkills@EA builds on its predecessor and continues to support the "Centre of Excellence for ICT in East Africa" (CENIT@EA) at the Nelson Mandela African Institution for Science and Technology (NM-AIST) in Arusha, Tanzania, by further improving the quality and sustainability of the Master Programme "Embedded and Mobile Systems" (MSc EMoS), such as through close collaboration and involvement of the private sector. The two-year master programme that includes practice-oriented elements such as an internship, an applied Master thesis, and guest lecturers from the industry aims to strengthen graduates' entrepreneurial skills and employability in the area of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
In addition to the Master, dSkills@EA offers a range of short course trainings. Unemployed graduates, employees in the private and public sector as well as university staff throughout the EAC can acquire market oriented digital skills that are relevant across sectors. These digital skills are crucial to increase competitiveness and productivity in the industry.
Finally, dSkills@EA strengthens young East African’s digital innovation and entrepreneurship capacities at the ideation phase at universities in the EAC through training, a regional network of entrepreneurship support organizations, multi-stakeholder dialogues, and matchmaking with companies.
The Project Goals 
The project aims at strengthening employment and innovation-related digital skills of young people in the EAC Partner States. Specifically, its objectives are that
the quality of the Master programme and study-related offers at the Centre of Excellence for ICT in East Africa is improved,
short-term training courses for digital skills designed according to the needs of the industry have been successfully carried out, and
entrepreneurship opportunities for piloting digital/innovative solutions are provided for 6 EAC Partner States through a regional digital innovation cooperation network.
The Project Partners
dSkills@EA is an initiative of the technical development cooperation between the East African Community (EAC) Secretariat and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The project implementation is in cooperation of the Inter-University Council of East Africa (IUCEA) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), together with an East African-German academic consortium led by the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) being the host university of CENIT@EA, and the University of Oldenburg as well as the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
Other key partners to the project include the East African Business Council (EABC), East African Science and Technology Commission (EASTECO) and the East African Communications Organization (EACO).
For additional information, you can also take a look into the dSkills@EA factsheet here.