A Future Most Are Not Ready For?

The Real Digital Skills Risk Lies in Assumed Competence

By 2030, nearly 230 million jobs across Africa will require some level of digital skills. It’s a statistic that often headlines conversations about the future of work, investment in connectivity, devices, and digital infrastructure. Yet more urgent questions are:

• What happens when learners are expected to succeed digitally without ever being equipped to adapt?
  

• Does assumed competence trump digital infrastructure?
  

According to Azra Parker, TeknaLabs’ Chief Program Officer, much of digital education still focuses on surface-level skills.

“Often we see courses attempt to teach a skill that they know is important for a workplace, like Microsoft Office or Google tools. However, these courses frequently assume that foundational digital skills are already in place,” she explains.

When those foundations are missing, learners tend to follow one of two trajectories. - The first is visible disengagement. Students encounter friction in steps that are considered obvious: opening links in separate tabs, managing multiple windows, or structuring digital files logically. “Instructions like ‘open this link in a new tab’ or ‘work in a separate window’ can stop them before they even reach the task they are meant to be learning,” Parker says.

The difficulty is incremental, often invisible to instructors, but repeated friction erodes confidence. Students may disengage early and, over time, are sometimes labelled unmotivated or careless, when the issue is structural, not personal

The second trajectory is more subtle.

- Some learners succeed within structured environments by following instructions carefully and memorising procedures. They complete assessments competently, but their learning does not transfer. “They learn how to follow instructions well enough to pass,” Parker notes. “But when they move to a new platform or tool, everything breaks down because they never learned the underlying digital skills.”

In digital-first learning and work environments, adaptability is not optional. Platforms change, systems evolve, and tools are updated. Without a foundational understanding, competence becomes brittle, leaving capable learners at risk of failing in environments where independence is assumed. Technological acceleration has only intensified this gap. The rise of generative Artificial Intelligence( AI), in particular, has amplified the consequences of assumed digital competence. “Things are accelerating much quicker,” Parker observes. AI is a powerful productivity tool for those who know how to ask the right questions, verify information, and integrate outputs meaningfully.

At the same time, it can actively harm learners who lack digital readiness. Without the ability to evaluate outputs or maintain ownership of their thinking, students risk becoming dependent on AI for answers rather than supported by it.

“Pretending AI does not exist sets students up for failure the moment they encounter it outside a controlled environment,” Parker adds. The divide in the digital world is no longer simply between those with and without access. Increasingly, it is between those who can operate independently within digital systems and those who cannot.

As Africa’s education systems contend with the pace of technological change, investments in devices and connectivity remain crucial. But access alone does not guarantee capability. The deeper challenge is equipping learners with durable digital behaviours — the ability to navigate unfamiliar systems, evaluate information critically, troubleshoot friction, and adapt to new tools independently. These are not temporary skills tied to a platform or software; they are foundational capabilities that determine whether access translates into opportunity.

At TeknaLabs, digital readiness is more than familiarity with tools. It is a set of behaviours that enables learners to operate independently, adapt continuously, and act responsibly within modern digital systems, preparing them for future educational and employment opportunities. By measuring readiness through the Digital Readiness Index (DRI), TeknaLabs offers a clear picture of gaps and guides learners toward the practical, durable capabilities they need to advance in a digital-first world!