SITIC AFRICA, the International Digital Exhibition dedicated to Africa is an International Digital Business platform involving the African and international offer in a logic of development, partnership, investment and co-project implementation. Over 300 African companies visiting the Exhibition with more than 200 professional visitors from Western countries.

Since its launch in 2016 in Tunis, SITIC AFRICA has always relied on 3 major axes:

1. Exposure of African potential in the digital sector with Starts Up and Innovation spaces.
2. Organization of B2B meetings between African and international digital companies between them, and between them and the digital user companies.
3. The International Forums on applied digital transformation to other sectors of the economy: agriculture, industry and services, including banking and financial services.

HRDs and company training departments have a major role to play in this digital transformation which cannot be implemented without an in-depth adaptation of knowledge, know-how and know how to be.

In this context, digital training constitutes the expected accelerator to gain in reactivity in a context where the markets impose their rhythm.

Learners are more and more demanding, increasingly digital, they want effective training, attractive and playful.

They no longer want to follow the tedious e-learning that they are still offered today and that they immediately forget. They are no more indulgent with serious games sometimes qualified as “mediocre imitations of video games”! Their judgment is severe and their expectations high. They want to learn while having fun! And they are right because satisfaction is one of the essential conditions for effective learning.

New pedagogical approaches, new learning formats and technological innovations are coming to training. Educational engineering evolves with digital, communication and its tools of seduction, conviction and virality are included in training, artificial intelligence is a powerful tool for personalization and gamification …

It is necessary to decompartmentalize training time and working time, some training must be accessible when the employee needs it, at his workstation. For these new uses, mobile learning and augmented reality provide tailor-made training “to the right person, in the right place, at the right time”. Augmented reality is a technology particularly suitable for creating materials that are both training tools and workstation support tools. The training thus enters the factory 4.0 for “training on the job” and to help alleviate the cognitive load. Virtual reality, used for decades for training in the space and military fields, is now democratizing in training by providing the immense advantages of realistic immersion, interaction, limitless scenarios. It allows for example to interact with virtual machines simulating real machines, too expensive to be immobilized, or to train in virtual environments without risk. Virtualization, playful approaches, mobile learning, and educational engineering adapted to these new learning formats, are the tools that will enable what is called “training 4.0”.

01 June 2022 at 10:00
2 hrs. 30min.

Presidency: Mr. ADAMA DIAWARA
Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research
Moderator: Prof. Tiémoman Koné, Director General of the Virtual University of Côte d’Ivoire

PROGRAM

10h00-10h15: Opening of the Forum by Mr. Adama Diawara, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Côte d’Ivoire
10:15-10:30 a.m.: Mr. Tiémoman Koné, Director General of the Virtual University of
Ivory Coast
10:30-10:45 a.m.: Mr. Taher Lakhdar, President of Esprit University, Tunisia
10:45-11:00 a.m.: Mr. Saliou Touré, President of the International University of Grand
Bassam, Ivory Coast
11h00-11h15: Mrs Emilie Bourel, Knowledge & Performance
IFG, Executive Education Africa, Ivory Coast
11:15-11:30 a.m.: Mr. Amadou Diawara, President of the Virtual University of Mali,
President of the Famib Group, President of the Digital Africa Cluster, Mali
11:30-11:45 a.m.: Mr. Martin Noel, Director of the Academy of Digital Transformation-Laval University, Canada
11.45am-12.30pm: Debates
12:30-12:45 p.m.: Closing by Mr. Adama Diawara, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research

Director General of the Digital Transformation Academy –
Laval University

Holder of a doctorate in operational research and a master’s degree in business administration (MBA) – operations management, Martin Noël began his career as a professor of quantitative methods at the School of Administrative Sciences (ESA) of the University TÉLUQ in 2001, to then exercise the function of director of the ESA, director of academic affairs and finally rector. As part of this mandate, he redefined the strategic positioning of the university through, in particular, a major digital transformation. Its actions aimed to refocus university activities on students and their success, to democratize access to university studies and to contribute to the socioeconomic development of Quebec.

In 2020, Prof. Noël becomes the general manager of the Academy of digital transformation (ATN) of Université Laval, with the mandate to innovate, both on the pedagogical, scientific and academic levels, in order to develop a dynamic training adapted to the needs of the civil service, private organizations and the general public. He also improved the ATN’s service offering by setting up a marketing research team that produces various surveys and measures, including NETendances, which provide a portrait of the evolution of digital use by the Quebecois.

BIRTH AND CAREER
Amadou DIAWARA, Knight of the National Order. He grew up between Mali and France. Digital transformation and Technological Innovations Expert – Speaker CEO and Founder of: Center for Innovation in Technological Research and Creative Industry (CIRTIC) He has had a long career in various major international companies. He returned to Mali in 2010 to get into computer engineering. Amadou has an MBA in IT Project Management, his last diploma and several other certifications.

CEO of CIRTIC present in Mali with representations abroad, which employs hundreds of collaborators.
– Publisher of IT solutions (for 13 years), President of the Digital Africa Cluster and of the Center for Innovation in Technological Research and Creative Industry. He is President and founder of the Digital Africa Cluster, a collective intelligence and co-construction platform that has implemented a range of digital solutions: CDA social; CDA Event; CDA Virtual Academy; CDA Crowfunding; CDA Biography; CDA survey and many other tools.
– SMS Banking service;
Today
– Founding President of the network of Virtual Universities, in particular Cluster Digital Africa Virtual Academy
– Vice-president of the Internet Governance Forum in Mali;
– Member of the Malian chapter of ISOC (Internet Society);
– Member of the Training and ICT Commission at the Council of European Investors in Mali (CIEM) and Member of the Union of Franco-Malian Ambassadors (UDA-FM)
– Member of ASIM (Association of Computer Companies of Mali;
– Representative of Mali at CINVU (COMSTECH Inter – Islamic Network on Virtual University); – Member of CAUDEV (African University Consortium for the Development of Virtual Education);
– Member of AUNEGe (Association of Universities for the development of digital education in Economics and Management) in France, network of Thematic Digital Universities (UNT),
– Ambassadors of the Moroccan Leaders Club.

Chief Executive Officer
ESPRIT Group

Tahar is the Director General of the Esprit Group has been involved in public higher education and vocational training reforms in Tunisia for over four decades with a prominent advocacy position for preparing engineering students to become operational, high employable engineers ready to tackle the challenges of the 21st century.

He founded ESPRIT in 2003 whose student population soared from 40 students in 2003 towards 12,000 engineering and business students today.

After securing the accreditation for all of its engineering programs, Tahar championed the establishment of Esprit Foundation the mission of which was to assist and nurture talented and needy students, to pursue their studies and to reduce the social divide among youngsters.

Prior to founding ESPRIT, contributed towards the establishment of the ISET network: the first higher institute of technology in Tunisia, IPEIN: the first preparatory institute for entrance to engineering schools in Tunisia, and ESPTT: the Tunisian School of Posts and Telecommunications.

He served as a consultant for various Ministries in Tunisia and for many International agencies on projects pertaining to vocational training and educational reforms and restructuring.
Tahar is originally a graduate of University Paris XIII, France, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in Physics in 1978. He is bilingual in Arabic/French.