Courses That We Offer

Courses That We Offer

VACID Africa Institute is an international knowledge institution that integrates ICT Learning with entrepreneurship, agribusiness and cottage industry development.

We acknowledge that learning in most of the developing economies is skewed towards skills formation and development. We also acknowledge that skills need an infrastructure within which they need to be exploited productively. Indeed, skills alone have to be interwoven with the operating economic fibre of their location for employability. Employability of skills, whether by an existing organization or one created by the person possessing the skill is very much dependent on what tools one has available to them. This is where ICT knowledge, business knowledge and entrepreneurship come in. Providing an operating environment such as a productive sector like agriculture, education, health, nutrition, transport or any other is a requirement.

VACID Africa Institute is a product of research and integration of productive sector focus to the policy directions of national economies. We have designed courses with our partners to create relevance in skill orientation by mixing this with technologies. We have formed collaborations that will expose all our learners to what can enable them create sustainable wealth/employment generation vehicles – their own businesses.

Starting a Business –

Businesses start and fail as fast as they are started for lack of the right sklills and preparedness. The preparedness comes from training, backed by mentorship and coaching. We do not just train, we incubate businesses and coach the owners to follow known paths to survival.

Join this programme to start your own business by learning through a pace that is determined by your speed and which leaves you with cases studies you can review as regularly as you can once the course duration expires. This is a high intensity seven week (55 Hours) course

After participants have completed this course they should be able to:

• Prepare a successful business plan
• Analyze whether or not to buy an existing business, a franchise or to start a new business
• Learn how to finance the venture by acquiring startup capital
• Select a business organization structure
• Determine the proper communication and information technologies that are needed
• Manage business accounting activities and track cash flow
• Conduct general business operations
• Recruit, hire, train, manage, and motivate employees
• Prepare for opening the business
• Manage purchasing and inventory control
• Develop a marketing plan and put it into action
• Use the internet for online marketing
• Set up an E-commerce site to sell online

Growing a Business –

Many businesses are started to create employment for the owner. To many business owners, investment and wealth creation using the business is not an immediate focus. At VACID Africa Institute, we understand this. We take the business owners through a phase of re-dreaming their first dream, backed with cases studies of successes where people have run global businesses that were started not with enormous resources but the skill-base that the knowledge owners that created the businesses had. Growing a business is indeed a product of managing resources that are efficiently and effectively packaged in a measurable fashion.

We help business owners learn what processes to pout in place to help them create businesses that employ others rather than just themselves and create wealth for them, whether or not they are involved in the running of those businesses. This is a high intensity five week (38 hours) course

After participants have completed this course they should be able to:

• Asses global trends and determine opportunities

• Develop a mission statement and develop a continuation plan

• Describe essential leadership qualities and personality traits for an entrepreneur

• Describe how to work positively with employees and customers

• Explain how to generate a product / service idea and develop it

• Describe types of business risks and how to assess them

• Describe how to apply IT to a business and participate in effective use of technology for business purposes

• Explain methods of generating a product / service idea and determining its feasibility

• Describe market strategies and planning

• Conduct a SWOT analysis

• Conduct competitive analysis and break-even analysis

• Analyze cash-flow patterns and interpret financial statements

• Explain how to track performance of a business plan

• Plan a budget for short, medium, and long terms

• Determine financial necessary to sustain and expand a business

• Explain the nature of business records, including accounting standards and legal reporting requirements

• Develop a personnel organizational plan

• Exhibit leadership skills and encourage team building

• Establish operating procedures and plan business layout

• Optimize supply chain solutions to meet the business plan

IExec Enterprise Essentials –

The iExec Enterprise Essentials workshop is a Cisco leadership and management course designed with the objective of demonstrating the value of information and communication technology (ICT) solutions to owners, non-IT managers, and leaders in for-profit businesses, whether they are small, medium, or large. The programme is specifically designed to empower leaders and "agents of change" by equipping them with the skills and knowledge necessary to create a lasting business impact within their organization.This is a high intensity seven week (52 hours) course

After participants have completed this course they should be able to:

• Describe the global trends and impact of the internet and information Technology (IT) on business.
• Explain the business and market drivers using the internet and IT
• Describe various strategies to increase productivity, efficiency, innovation, and profitability and create a Networked Virtual Organization (NVO).
• Explain the concepts of IT governance
• Asses your organization readiness and explain the need for readiness planning.
• Describe the uses and value of internet-enabled solutions in improving business processes.
• Perform an external and internal situation analysis
• Create an e-vision for success
• Apply the principles of portfolio planning and management
• Identify and prioritize opportunities for process improvement using the internet and IT.
• Describe the importance of change management to the success of your internet and IT initiatives
• Recognize when and how to build a business case.