Techconnect

Rapid digitisation of the Dutch economy has widened the gap between people with in-demand tech skills and those without, creating persistent shortages of qualified IT candidates despite recent economic growth. TechConnect, coordinated by the Amsterdam Economic Board with partners including Booking.com, TomTom and the ICT education fund CA-ICT, was set up to close this gap for underrepresented groups.

The programme aims to bring 50,000 people from underrepresented groups into a tech study programme or tech job, split across specific target groups: 20,000 older ('Generation X', 40+) corporate employees to retrain, 15,000 women, young people with a migration background and other underrepresented groups, 9,000 unemployed people, 5,000 SME owners, and 1,000 'overqualified' people moving into design or tech-administrator roles.

TechConnect has launched 12 projects, including two free coding schools (TechGrounds, a Dutch franchise of Brussels' MolenGeek) in Zaanstad Poelenburg and Amsterdam Nieuw-West, with further locations planned in Rotterdam and other Dutch cities. It has also published the TekkieWorden careers guide and launched TeachForAmsterdam, a joint schools-business-university initiative aiming to train 300 teachers in informatics skills within four years.