More than 300,000 young Tunisians have signed up to a mobile employability service launched this month by an operator in the country.

Tunisiana, owned by Qatar’s Ooredoo network, formerly Qtel, has partnered with Arab social change organisations Silaltech and Edupartage to offer the Najja7ni Employment resource to help the estimated 30 per cent of unemployed under-30s in the country.

The free service provides careers guidance, financial literacy information, career search strategies, links to local training opportunities and tips on how to start a business. The information comes in the form of quizzes, SMS alerts, coaching and psychometric tests. It works on any handset and is currently available in French but will soon be available in Arabic and English.

This is the third educational service to be created by Tunisiana, which says it is community-conscious communications company committed to using the latest technology to address key social issues. The company has also created a revision service and a platform to help young people learn English.

Qtel, which owns Tunisiana and operates in further countries like Kuwait, Algeria, Iraq and Palestine, rebranded to Ooredoo earlier this year to take its subsidiaries under one roof and try to appeal to a younger audience. Ooreddo means I want in Arabic.

“Mobile phones play a key role in the lives of young people, helping to organise their social lives, providing them with entertainment and increasingly helping them enter the world of work and pursue their ambitions,” said Dr. Nasser Marafih, Group CEO, Ooredoo. “Communications companies need to find new ways to help them to do this, and I’m proud that Ooredoo is taking a lead in this area. We are studying the success of Tunisiana’s ‘Najja7ni Employment’, and assessing how this approach could be mirrored in other markets in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia.”
The company reported revenues of $9.3 bn in 2012 and had a global customer base of more than 92.9m people.