The German mechanical and plant engineering industry urgently needs well-trained specialists. To meet this demand, more and more companies are looking for opportunities to work with qualified personnel abroad - especially in the IT sector. To support this, the VDMA has now concluded a cooperation agreement with the service provider getINNOtized to facilitate access to IT specialists from Ghana.

getINNOtized evaluates around 2500 profiles of Ghanaian IT specialists every month, of which around 100 are then included in an IT specialist pool. They are then trained and prepared for a job in Europe or the USA for nine months. More than 3,000 IT specialists have already been placed with German companies in this way. And IT specialists are available in the pool for almost all IT tasks.

Prof. Claus Oetter, Managing Director of the VDMA Software and Digitalization Association and Head of the IT Department, emphasizes the high availability and quality of the skilled workers provided: "Ghana has a very good level of IT training, which can also help our industry. The IT specialists are young, available in large numbers and affordable for SMEs. What's more, Ghana is only an hour away from Germany, so it's possible to work together during normal office hours. And the English language is commonplace everywhere in IT anyway."

Pilot project launched

Following the successful launch of a pilot project with a German mechanical engineering company, the service is now to be expanded. VDMA project manager Christoph Herr: "The VDMA is the first point of contact for its members here and establishes contact with getINNOtized." The combination of a growing technology sector, a skilled workforce and political stability makes Ghana a promising destination for companies looking for IT specialists. The information and communication technology sector is one of the fast-growing sectors in Ghana and contributed around 5 percent to the gross domestic product in 2021. Ghana is considered the IT stronghold of Africa and is also a very young country with a population of which more than half (57%) is under 25 years old.

Michael Wesoly, CIO of Gebr. Heller Maschinenfabrik from Nürtingen, confirms that the first pilot projects have already got off to a successful start: "We have been positively surprised by the speed of the selection process and the qualifications of the employees we have found. Suitable candidates were also found at short notice for our very specific requirements. We have achieved a level of productivity and efficiency in a short space of time that we did not expect."

Ulrich Busch, Managing Director of getINNOtized, points out another advantage of the cooperation: "Process reliability is just as important to German companies when sourcing specialists from abroad as the availability of qualified candidates - which is why our customers conclude contracts with us in accordance with German law and can manage the collaboration effectively using the established processes from the IT department."

VDMA initiative "Skilled workers for Africa"

The VDMA's "Skilled Workers for Africa" initiative also provides training of German quality in Botswana, Nigeria and Kenya. The graduates of these programs are already being deployed by member companies around the world.

The shortage of skilled workers is also one of the biggest challenges facing the mechanical and plant engineering sector. According to a recent VDMA survey from fall 2023, around 70 percent of companies are experiencing "severe shortages" of technical specialists. Against this backdrop, the search for qualified IT specialists abroad is a necessary and promising alternative - also for German SMEs.