Centre of excellence in development & innovation (CEDeI)

The Canary Islands, particularly Tenerife, have a range of infrastructures that could well turn out to serve as catalysts for economic growth. The deep crisis of recent years has revealed the weakness of operating within a limited set of economic activities, concentrated fundamentally in the services and construction sectors.

In addition to those infrastructures, the Canaries achieve high standards of post-graduate technical-professional training and university education. This suggests that a change in productivity model towards a knowledge-based economy based on the intense application of information and communication technologies (ICTs), is feasible. In other words, there is an opportunity to drive a software-development and telecommunications industry that sells its services outside of the Canaries.

In this context, the development of a work programme that creates employment based on these industries is a welcome first step towards increased economic activity in the ICT sector.

The main aim of the project, which is funded by the Tenerife island council, is to launch software application development services, built on a dedicated training and employment programme.

In short, it is about improving and adapting the skills of these professionals to the market and to the needs of high-value technological companies, while minimising the challenges posed by the labour market and maximising the chance of being part of the digital transformation underway in the business world. This is essentially the need for the Centre of Excellence in Development & Innovation (CEDeI).