SA government to train 50 000 data scientists

The South African government is looking to train 50 000 data scientist in the country, the country’s Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams has said.

Ndabeni-Abrahams — speaking during a webinar on Women in STEM in Africa and the COVID 19 Pandemic held on 29 September by the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation — mentioned the country’s skills development programme and explained the South African government had conducted a skills gap analysis on digital skills in the country, and subsequently developed a national digital skills development strategy which she said was also based on the insights from the report by the Presidential Commission of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. “That is why I’m proud to announce right now to you that as part of the partnerships that we have built, we will be training about 50 0000 data scientists in South Africa. This is a partnership that we have done with the Department of Higher Education and Coursera – the online platform. “We then reached out to the industry to say can you provide the devices for them and then we are looking at connecting those. This is what we are saying that when we work together we are able to minimise the impact (sic) and also see the great impact that we can have for for the effective execution because I get to benefit as government and at the same time the private sector gets to benefit because there will be more innovators that will help the private sector be innovative and responsive to the people’s needs” she. said. “I think governments should come up with clear strategies in terms of human capacity development and investing in stem,” added Ndabeni-Abrahams. In October the National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa (NEMISA) and the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies opened applications for the programme. The department explained that the initiative will mainly focus on young people who did not finish school, school learners who could not enter tertiary education, TVETs, students who had failed to graduate , as well as graduates who could not find employment. The South African government in 2018 embarked on a plan to equip up to one million young people with skills in data science by 2030. Business technology publication ITWeb reported in October that the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, in partnership with the Media Information and Communication Technologies Sector Education and Training Authority is working together with other stakeholders to train young people in software development, cyber security, robotics, artificial intelligence and in drones. In September, 135 participants of the government training initiative graduated a 12-month data science course.ai