The potential of establishing computer_aided_design (CAD) industry in Africa-Sudan as a case-study

The VLSI electronic circuit designs have steadily grown in their capacity and complexity through the years. The design automation has become an essential part of the design team to enable design completion and verification. Responsibility of a design automation engineer includes setup, customization, integration of design tools (EDA, and non EDA). In Africa, the higher education of the microelectronics focuses mainly on the instruction of chip/circuit design. Virtually little or no emphasis is applied to grow design automation skill sets of their graduates. This paper discusses the potential of African educational institutes of becoming the supplier of qualified design automation engineers for future African IC industry and/or worldwide VLSI job market. This paper will propose that African universities should start emphasizing more on design automation to increase number of graduates in the Design automation field. The benefit of such effort will enable African graduates to exploit the microelectronics job market and eventually help encourage industry to be established within Africa for growth opportunities.