EU helps Shirak region become IT center of Armenia
Information technologies (IT) are growing rapidly in Armenia. The country’s government announced IT as one of their priorities and recently decided to establish a Ministry of High Technologies. The Armenian government has also adopted laws according to which newly created IT startups will be granted tax privileges until 2020.
In Armenia, almost everything is by and large centralized in the country’s capital of Yerevan. This means professionals from the country’s provinces usually need to leave their hometowns and move to Yerevan. This migration flow is destructive for towns and villages, and the country’s government is trying to address this situation.
The EU supports Armenia in the development of its IT sector through various projects and grants. Particular emphasis is put on the country’s regions. One such project is “Boosting Technological Developments in Shirak Marz”, which is being implemented in Shirak, the poorest province of Armenia.
In the framework of the project, some 246 unemployed people and students aged 17-35 passed a six-month training program on various programming languages, followed by a coding “boot camp”. The latter was carried out in connection with local IT companies that mentored the trainees and assisted them with working on real projects.
A special incubator lab was established in Gyumri Technological Center, which accommodated trainees during the boot camp program.
