- Mexico faces a widening skills gap in advanced manufacturing and digital technologies, with 68% of employers struggling to find qualified talent.
- Under Plan México, developing specialized talent is critical to leveraging nearshoring and strengthening the country’s global competitiveness.
- The Aprendices Digitales Program in México aligns education, digital certifications, and work-based learning to meet the skills demands of priority sectors.
Mexico faces a critical challenge in advancing its productive transformation: a shortage of specialized talent. Sectors such as advanced manufacturing — key to aerospace, automotive, pharmaceutical, and electronics development — require increasingly sophisticated technical and digital skills.
Despite being a diversified economy, 68% of employers in Mexico report difficulty finding the profiles they need. Digital acceleration is further widening the gap, particularly in areas such as cloud computing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), and data analytics, where traditional education is advancing at a slower pace than demand.
In this context, Plan México aims to position the country as a global manufacturing hub, leveraging nearshoring (the relocation of production) and the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). Achieving this goal makes talent development a strategic priority.
To address this gap, the Aprendices Digitales Program (or PAD, its Spanish acronym) was launched in Mexico as a collaborative initiative between the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Cisco, Google Cloud, IBM, and the National College of Professional Technical Education (CONALEP, in Spanish). The program links academic training with the needs of priority industries under Plan México, with the goal of boosting productivity, domestic value added, and international competitiveness.
The Aprendices Digitales Program is designed to develop advanced digital skills among young people and adults aged 15 to 40, a key population for energizing the labor market. It seeks to expand learning and employment opportunities in strategic sectors, particularly advanced manufacturing and the digital economy.
PAD is built on an integrated model that connects technical and vocational education, sector-specific training, and real workplace experience. Its three pillars are:
- Technical academic curriculum. Provided by CONALEP, it includes nine technical degree programs aligned with demand in priority sectors under Plan México.
- Integrated digital skills. Modules and certifications from Cisco, Google Cloud, and IBM are embedded directly into the academic curriculum, strengthening competencies in cybersecurity, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.
- Work-based aligned training. A structured plan for on-the-job training, aligned with the academic curriculum. This is implemented in partnership with companies in priority sectors within the economic development hubs identified under Plan México.
The ambition of Aprendices Digitales goes beyond Mexico. The next step is to bring similar initiatives to Central America and the Dominican Republic, using the América en el Centro platform as a driver for integration, capacity building, and regional competitiveness.
This vision is already underway. In partnership with Google Cloud, a first phase was implemented that made a total of 10,000 digital training scholarships available in El Salvador, marking a step forward in scaling the model.
Seeing this collaboration in action — bringing together the public sector, academia, and the global technology industry — shows that when the focus is on skills, it is possible to create scalable digital training pilots with real impact.
The region’s digital future is built by developing talent, and we are laying the groundwork to form the specialized capabilities that will make it possible.
To learn more, watch the video below (in Spanish, with English closed captions):