Please describe your proposed solution.
Summary: We're bootstrapping the use of PRISM and VC’s in Africa. Our focus? Offering our easy to use edu-credentials builder tool for coding schools, and a real incentive for the schools and IT professionals to utilize it to access European IT hires.
Background: Despite the vast and growing numbers of talented software developers in Ethiopia and the wider sub-saharan Africa, the potential of this region often goes unnoticed by recruiters when it comes to filling their talent needs. From the outside, for example from the EU, the market may seem foreign and unfamiliar, leading to a lack of understanding and trust in the capabilities of software developers from this region.. Among the reasons for this is lack of exposure and awareness of the software development industry in this area, the potential language and cultural barriers, and the lack of trust in the skills and educational quality.
However, there has been a rampant growth in producing internationally competent software developer talent in Ethiopia. The country has witnessed the establishment of international training programs and the presence of locally licensed firms offering education that meets global standards. Although many strides have been taken to develop quality talent, The lack of verified data about the candidate’s past education, certifications and experience does not make the remote recruitment experience any easier.
About Fairway: Fairway is established in Ethiopia with Fairway platform that has close to 1000 job seekers and dozens of registered businesses and job postings (also available in Telegram: https://t.me/fairway_jobs_ethiopia). The existing platform contains two interfaces: one for job seekers and one for businesses. Both of these interfaces contain important functionalities such as cv generator and job listings for job seekers and candidate filtering and processing for businesses.
Additionally, the features include the ability to connect job seeker DID to the job seeker account through Proofspace technology. Job Seekers can verify existing Educational credentials with their account and request and receive Proof of Employment Credentials, while businesses can issue verifiable Proof of Employment credentials through Fairway DID. We have introduced Employment credentials to the Ethiopian Market for the first time. You can find more about our previous Project Catalyst project on our website under Projects and Catalyst resources:<https://www.lidonation.com/en/proposals/employment-credentials-on-prism-f8> & Employment Credentials on PRISM).
As a natural progression of our previous projects, we have identified a conjoined group of job seekers, educational institutions and businesses in the IT sector that together would benefit the most from the use of Educational and Employment credentials. Ethiopian IT developers are a tech-savvy and capable group that are well-suited to be early adopters of blockchain-based identity and wallets for building reputable CVs and finding remote and global work opportunities. Many of these developers are graduates of specialized coding schools that prioritize talent development and job opportunities. These schools, being more advanced and less bureaucratic than traditional universities, are ideal for embracing student and graduate data as VCs. Focusing on this group as the initial first adopters/users of the technology, we are building for ourselves the best chances to solve the complete problem described.
Our proposed solution is to expand the capabilities and usability of our jobs platform (https://fairway.work/) by building an additional dashboard for educational institutions such as coding schools and universities to easily manage their available courses and credential programmes, view graduate's requests and to issue Educational VC's through Proofspace DID. This will serve as easy to use "EDU-credentials for jobs"-builder tool for any educational institution in the world. Although many SSI platforms and tools exist, such as Atala PRISM and Proofspace that we use, they alone are not simple and straightforward enough to onboard these types of educational institutions to the issuing process. Simultaneously, these tools are not yet widely adopted and need a usable incentive.
Furthermore, we provide the job seekers who are graduates from these Ethiopian coding schools a real, practical and highly valuable incentive to request such credentials and to utilize them: <u>the access to European IT jobs provided through Fairway Finland</u>. The project contains a piloting phase where we aim to match graduates with newly issued educational credentials to real IT jobs in Europe. To put it in simple terms, Fairway has IT-clients in Finland that are interested in hiring Ethiopian talent. These educational credentials are used to verify the candidate's background and education, to build trust with a potential employer in Finland.
Also included, is setting up a governance framework and trust registry of the coding schools, and education/training for the coding schools to use Proofspace DID and to issue verified educational credentials
Results: At the end, we aim to achieve 100 onboarded developers from 2-5 different Ethiopian coding schools, who are issued educational VCs. Additionally, if the project is proven to be successful our bonus goal is to achieve MoUs that indicate 1000+ additional students being onboarded within the next 12 months after the project.