site.btaBurgas Digihub Opens Academy to Support Workers and Businesses

Starting next year, the Southeast Digital Innovation Hub in Burgas, or Digihub, will open an academy with 19 programmes for the qualification and retraining of personnel for business, Petko Georgiev, Digihub Chair and head of ICT Cluster Burgas, said in a BTA interview.

"This academy will offer custom-made training at the request of the companies themselves. All programmes have been discussed with representatives of some of the largest companies operating in the city. The training will be based on the advertised job vacancies. Recently, Burgas Municipality made a very detailed study of the IT sector. The data shows that in the last year alone, 40 companies have started work in Burgas and there are more than 350 vacancies. This gives us hope that the academy will play a serious role in providing quality training," said Petko Georgiev.

According to him, the number of employees in the sector in Burgas is currently over 1,600, and most of the vacancies in the companies are for remote work. "We will start working in the spring, together with the universities, the Municipality of Burgas and the companies themselves. The academy will be open with 19 different courses that are not only from the IT field. We also have economic ones. The idea is to prepare personnel who are willing to retrain, specialists who already have some experience can also gain more knowledge. People from other sectors, such as tourism, can also benefit from the training," Georgiev further said.

According to him, the interest in Burgas from large American technology companies has been serious in the last few years. 

"Many companies from the US that operate in Bulgaria are already partnering with Bulgarian companies. Of course, not only the wonderful collaboration between the municipality, universities and the local ecosystem, but also all the city's assets in terms of infrastructure are attracting more and more foreign companies," said Georgiev.

Burgas has always been an attractive destination for digital nomads and that is true year-round, not just during the summer months, said also the head of the local ICT cluster.

Less than a month ago, a new shared workspace opened in Burgas, which is located in the heart of the city.

There are more than 30 shared workspaces, individual offices, as well as some for smaller teams of 3 to 5 people, he added. Currently, people from Ukraine and other cities in Bulgaria work there.

Georgiev went on to say that the High School of Computer Programming and Innovation in Burgas is one of the symbols of cooperation between local authorities, universities and technology companies. "Almost 100% of the school board is made up of specialists from large IT companies. In spring, 120 students will already be on the job market with diplomas from this school. I believe that companies will do their best to keep them in the city, in the offices they have opened here, so that they can start internships from the first year of their studies in higher education," Georgiev said.