An owner of a digital and online business in Rwanda, Martine Benemariya credits COL’s Skills Online programme with helping her turn around her struggling business.
This mother of two used to find herself at a loss, whenever she was confronted with day-to-day technical issues related to computers breaking down, failed Internet networks, unconnected working devices, etc. These ongoing issues greatly impacted her confidence in the success of her business as she needed to provide reliable online services to her customers.
In December 2019, Martine joined Skills Online – a collaboration between COL, its partners in four countries, including Rwanda, and Udemy Inc, an online learning and teaching marketplace.
Due to her busy schedule with lots of responsibilities, Martine cannot commit to full-time study. She appreciated the flexibility offered by Skills Online and fully benefitted from the networking fundamentals courses on the Udemy platform. Prior to attending these courses, she had to pay technicians to fix many technical issues. Now she can cut down on business expenses by fixing these issues herself.
Martine says both her customer base and her revenues have increased and she has regained confidence in her business. “I am giving back to my community by training youth, women and people with disabilities equipping them with digital literacy skills because these skills help us change our life for the better.”
Skills Online has been benefitting many other people like Martine. There are now 4000 participants in the COL-Udemy-RTN Skills Online Rwanda project, who are pursuing courses on Udemy and Coursera. The basic premises of Skills Online is to skill, reskill and upskill people so that they can graduate from subsistence living to more remunerative employment – equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
