The Brazilian government has announced a partnership with Microsoft to train millions of citizens in technology subjects over the next three years.

Under the Mais Brasil (More Brazil) program, a remote education platform developed in partnership with the Ministry of Economy offers 20 courses through the Microsoft Community Training tool, with the capacity to train up to 5.5 million job seekers by 2023.

The technology courses offered include options at different levels, ranging from digital literacy to more advanced modules covering areas such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and data science.

In addition, Microsoft also donated cloud credits to help enhance the National Employment System and improve job prospects for up to 25 million workers. The solution will use AI to connect people and their skills to relevant job opportunities, and also refer individuals to qualification courses.

At the launch of the initiative on Tuesday (20), Brazilian minister of science, technology and innovation Marcos Pontes, said that skilling the workforce is critical for Brazil's future: "The area of information technology and communications has a very large deficit of skilled professionals. One of our key areas of focus is to attract young people's attention to technology careers," the minister said.

Microsoft was chosen for the partnership due to its willingness to contribute to skilling the population at not extra cost for the government according to Carlos Costa, head of the Special Secretariat for Productivity, Employment and Competitiveness at the Ministry of Economy.

"We have no [financial] resources at the moment. Some companies offered solutions that would be temporarily free and then paid for", Costa noted. In July, Microsoft agreed to reduce prices for products supplied to the Brazilian government [1]as part of initiatives aimed at rationalizing public sector IT spend.

Costa added that the company

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