About:
The Digital Marketing Skills in Africa Audit is an initiative aimed at measuring knowledge gaps across key digital marketing skills in Africa, for purposes of setting up industry benchmarks in the quest to take the continent’s digital marketing game to the next level.
2020 was the inaugural year, and was launched with #DMSAA2020. It is intended that digital marketing skills audits be conducted annually from here on, taking into account the expected constant changes in the digital marketing sector, driven by ever-developing technologies.
The Scenario:
Africa is the youngest continent in the world, with 60% of her population under 25 years of age.
While the continent has been on a positive growth path for the last 5 years, the African Development Bank laments the jobless growth that has been experienced to date.
“[African] youth face roughly double the unemployment rate of adults, with significant variation by country.” – AFDB
The Opportunity:
Digital Marketing (DM) arguably offers one of the biggest job opportunities for the youth, due to the following factors:
- The DM sector is growing due to increasing shift in focus and budgets by brands across the world;
- There is a broad spectrum of skills;
- The skills can be learnt completely online and for free;
- The skills can be self-taught; and
- The sector is technology driven, thus there is an ongoing requirement for development of new skills.
All the above favor the youth.
The Issue:
Africa does not have digital marketing skill benchmarks.
In addition, while it is common knowledge that there is a digital marketing skills gap in the continent (and the world at large), there is not much information available on the size of the gap.
The Solution:
The issue above inspired the creation of the Digital Marketing Skills in Africa Audit initiative. There is a need for this initiative in order to minimize the opportunity costs of doing digital marketing wrong.
The continental digital marketing skills audit will be conducted annually, with a view to using the results to establish and continuously review the necessary benchmarks.
Number of skills assessed:
Who must participate:
Every effort has been made to assess all the key digital marketing skills, and this is a key requirement for the comprehensive assessment.
10 skills were assessed in the 2020 audit.
ALL professionals whose roles are affected, in any big or small way, by Digital Marketing and Communications.
