ICT and job creation in The Gambia

By Simon F mendy
ICT is meeting the challenges of the Gambian population, including That is to say ICT is improving the county’s economic development by creating more jobs. The Gambia is a small country with less than 2 billion people. Despite this contrast, it possesses a huge market potential for trade and investment and a huge opportunity for growth and improvement and through ICT great companies have been birthed. Many young Gambian are gaining knowledge on ICT and are starting their own businesses, and they are growing. This is of course a benefit for the economy. The Gambia does not need to look outside for inspiration in this domain; as its youth are well educated and have excellent literacy in English. A good example is Qgroup. Qgroup (QuantumNet, Qcell ) is founded by a Gambian ICT entrepreneur who has been covered prominently in local and international medias such as the BBC. QGroup is an ICT company with over 300 employees.
There are many other ICT companys and startups like: InSIST Global a software development firm that specializes in business information management systems and builds all of its technology from the ground up. Pristine Consulting, a Microsoft Certified Partner, with extensive experience in virtually all technology-related fields, ranging from software development and IT consulting services, to website design and development solutions. Gamjobs.com, an online job search and career support website that connect employers to jobs hunters. The portal makes the process of advertising, searching and finding jobs in the Gambia easier, affordable and accessible to every one. .Farmfresh, a software company that enable your to do online shoping. With farmfresh you free your mind from the notion that, for example, you have to present yourself at a physical place in order to transact.These and many other firms does not only provide innovative products/services that are addressing specific challenges of Gambians and non Gambian alike but also provide employments. In a nutshell ICT is an enabler for job creation and entrepreneurship. ICT has recently given rise to many new occupations, such as database administrators, Programmers and web designers.
The mobile industry—Comium, Qcell, Gamcel and Africell —-are major sources of employment opportunities on both the supply and demand side. Many are directly employed by these GSMs. Indirect jobs also show strong potentials for new growth, in professions broadly associated with the industry such as application develoment, content provision and call centre operations. Faster mobile networks and more capable smartphones make mobile communications a platform for innovation across different sectors like health, agriculture, tourism etc. It is difficult to estimate the number of people establishing new companies or employment generated as small and microenterprise expand, but mobile phones undoubtedly contribute to this process.
New technologies have also created entirely new industries in The Gambia, for example the Video and Audio Streaming industry. A big player in this industry is MediaMatic. MediaMatic is a private media firm that works in all media aspects. It boast of over 20 employers. All in all, ICTs are transforming the world of work, creating new job opportunities and making labor markets more innovative.
So ICT is crucial when it comes to creating more employment opportunities in The Gambia. ICTs are not only providing new avenues for job creation that could help tackle Gambians unemployment but also making labor markets more innovative and inclusive. In fact jobs in IT services and IT enable services create jobs in other sectors.

About Author

Simon F Mendy is a social media intern with Gamjobs.com. He is an IT enthusiast who love writing and keep his readers always on the loop of latest happening around jobs and employment in the Gambia. Simon held a Bsc in computer science and mathematics from the university of The Gambia. He has strong interest in object oriented Software development process, especially using .Net and Java based technologies.  You can follow him: https://www.facebook.com/simon.mendy.12