During the 2024 edition of the Mobile Word Congress (MWC), Barcelona City Council and Cisco signed a collaboration agreement aimed at promoting local technological talent. The agreement was signed on Tuesday 27 February by the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, and the president of Cisco EMEA, Oliver Tuszik, opening up avenues for collaboration between the two parties.

They will work together through Barcelona Activa, the city’s economic-promotion agency, and the Cisco Networking Academy, a world-leading, non-profit IT training programme. The partnership will enable Barcelona Activa to respond to the demands of the knowledge-intensive economy, making Barcelona an international technology hub in Southern Europe and a leader in an innovative groundbreaking sector with high added value.

One of the key aspects to be explored will be support for innovative pilot projects that facilitate the training, certification and employability of local technological talent, addressing the needs of the city’s technological companies in fields such as cyber-security, social media, programming, data science and operating systems.

During the signing ceremony, the Mayor Collboni emphasised that this agreement “positions Barcelona as a hub for technological innovation, acting as a launching pad for companies, entrepreneurs and professionals from information and telecommunications technology industries”. This partnership is part of the City Council’s commitment to creating talent and revitalising the IT sector. This strategy is included in the Barcelona Green Deal and the 2020-2030 Barcelona Economic Agenda.

Through this agreement, the City Council aims to respond to the demands of the technology and digital economy in regard to talent. It has already created the IT Academy for training programmers. Over the last five years, this training centre, whose graduates have an 84% employment rate, has trained nearly 2,800 people in the IT sector’s most sought-after professional fields: web development and data science. In 2023, 40% of the students at the centre were women.

Meanwhile, Cisco Networking Academy’s 390 academies and close to 800 teachers have already trained nearly 330,000 students (40,000 women) in Spain in digital technologies.