APA-Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) – After Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal will host this programme run by the Groupement interbancaire monetique-Uemoa (GIM-UEMOA), aimed at developing acumes associated with payments.
The initiative, known as the “GIM Trilogy,” comprises three programmes, namely GIM Vocation, GIM-Developpement du Capital Humain (GIM-DCH) and GIM-Centre Regional d’Innovation des Paiement
(GIM-CRIP).
The aim of the GIM Vocation programme is to encourage secondary school students to take an interest in key technologies, including cybersecurity, blockchain and artificial intelligence. The aim is to
have an impact on the payments sector by developing learners’ skills in these areas of the future.
On Monday 29 April 2024, the Lycee Mamie Faitai in Bingerville, a secondary school of excellence located to the east of Abidjan, hosted the first day of an information and awareness-raising tour scheduled to last four days across the country.
According to the Managing Director of GIM-UEMOA, Coulibaly Minayegnan, after the Lycee Mamie Faitai in Bingerville, where the GIM Vocation Programme was launched in first-year classes, the Lycee sainte Marie in Cocody hosted the second day the following day.
Mr. Coulibaly Minayegnan explained the importance of new technologies in the acquisition of skills to more than 200 pupils in the second year of secondary school at Lycee Sainte-Marie de Cocody, in the east of Abidjan.
“Our primary interest is to encourage vocations from secondary school level so that these fields, which offer jobs and careers, can be popularised and benefit all our secondary school students,” he said.
“Often, unemployment can also be a problem of orientation. So we are giving the tools and the keys to our high school students in the UEMOA region,” he maintained, adding that “we have started with Côte
d’Ivoire, and we will continue in Senegal and other countries”.
The aim of this initiative is to “enable all secondary schools in the UEMOA region to better orient themselves in this new world, which requires skills in technology, and we have presented these different
possibilities to them,” he added.
Coulibaly Minayegnan indicated that the institution plans to “repeat this exercise every year, as far as possible.” By setting up the GIM Vocation programme, GIM-UEMOA is assuming its “social responsibility.”
This regional entity also intends to support and facilitate the educational infrastructure of the various countries by helping the major schools and universities to offer courses in artificial intelligence and blockchain through the GIM Human Capital Programme.
The GIM Regional Payments Innovation Centre (GIM CRIP) programme, for its part, involves “selecting students who have interesting ideas for business concepts and entrepreneurship to solve the problems we have in the region,” he pointed out.
“We explained to the children that blockchain is a technology for solving problems of trust, transparency and traceability. Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, is a technology that enables technology to function in the same way that humans think,” he explained.
“Combining all this with cybersecurity can generate new ideas. At the end of the day, it’s about having dynamic SMEs and skills for our existing companies that are facing security problems or innovation
challenges,” he concluded.
AP/fss/as/APA