Vocational Education and Skills Training
Case Study
Skills Training for ITeS in South Africa: A PPP Model www.niit.com
The Public Private Partnership Model has evolved as a key requirement for sustainable and scalable developmental programmes. With skills training becoming an important requirement to cater to the needs of the rapidly growing economy, the featured case study demonstrates a method for effective skills training programmes through collaboration between NIIT, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Government of South Africa
By Ajai Manohar Lal, Chief Business Officer, Individual Learning Solutions - IT (International), NIIT Skill development in the IT Industry has assumed great importance on account of the massive shortage of manpower in this sector. The National Skill Development Corporation has listed the IT and IT enabled services (ITeS) Industry as the one of the key growth sectors that would face severe manpower crunch if adequate arrangements are not made to train human resources. According to the reports of IDC, NASSCOM, close to US $ 1.7 trillion is spent on hardware and IT related services and this spending has been growing at more than 7 percent Compund Annual Growth (CAGR). It is anticipated that IT Services will grow at a CAGR of 6 to 7 percent till 2012 and ITES is expected to grow at 10 to 12 percent over
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the same period. Several private industry players in the skills training sector have entered into the training field in order to cater to the manpower requirements. This need is not only limited to India but also in various other countries. One of the innovative initiatives in this field has been that of the Department of Economic Development and Tourism of Kwa Zulu Natal – South Africa, NIIT and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) who had entered into an agreement on 1st August 2008 to train 10, 000 under privileged young people in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) skills in over five years.
Vocational Education and Skills Training
The Background The scarcity and inadequacy of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills were emphasised at the Presidential International Advisory Council on Information Society and Development meeting in August 2007 and both corporate leaders and the South African Government expressed concern in this regard. The members supported the initiative to establish the e-Skills Institutes in the country as the scarcity of ICT skills in South Africa was negatively impacting economic growth and development. The charter re-affirmed its position on the need to fasttrack ICT skills development and suggested a more direct engagement with local and international corporate partners. This led to the conception of this skills development initiative involving multiple partners from Government, Academia and Corporate Sector and establishment of Software and Business Process Outsourcing institute. The institute seeks to provide strategic leadership on economic development and creating conducive conditions for sustainable growth and development with specific strategies to address diverse issues. It also would facilitate the support for high impact projects and strategic local economic empowerment initiatives by leveraging appropriate resources, resulting in the retention of current jobs and the creation of sustainable quality jobs and empowerment in both the first and second economies. It will be useful in stimulating the local and international competitiveness in the economy through improving skills and service standards, facilitating and supporting excellence enhancing programmes. The Collaboration The objective of the collaboration between NIIT, Department of Economic Development, and Confederation of Indian Industries was to utilise each other’s core competencies expertise, knowledge, and technical know-how for mutual gain and benefit to realise the vision. It seeks to promote the learning and the use, or development of provincial skills, expertise and products and provide strategic leadership on economic development . The Department of Finance and Economic Development and Tourism of Kwa Zulu Natal province, Moses Kotane Institute, Confederation of India Industry and NIIT are working together in a joint alliance to create Global Talent Pool in ICT and Business Process Outsourcing in the province. This initiative entails training of learners in eight distributed government owned Further Education and Training colleges across the Province in over five year time period. “NIIT is supplying content, curriculum, training methodol-
ogy, education management process, e-Learning, training of trainers, trainers, industry collaboration and interface framework and mentoring. CII is helping with internships in India and Africa, Provincial government is funding the training part of the project�, says Ajai Manohar Lal, Chief Business Officer, Individual Learning Solutions - IT (International) at NIIT. The initiative helps support high impact projects by leveraging existing appropriate resources, ensure retention and progression of current jobs, creation of sustainable quality jobs and employee empowerment, stimulate local and international competitiveness in the KZN economy through improving skills and service standards and thereby becoming a part of economic growth of Africa. Innovation The key innovation in the model has been the use of best practices based on international case studies. The project is inclusive of blended learning, live industry internship in India and Africa, which is embedded as a part of the programme. Existing infrastructure is sought to be optimally used through multi stakeholder partnership. The system emphasises on entrepreneurial development and small, medium and micro enterprise. The programme became operational in 98 days from the date it started. The project has been adopted as the National Priority to Skill and Up Skill in other provinces of the country. More than 3000 learners have been undergoing ICT and BPO courses, with 30 learners selected for Live Internship as part of the course in India. Nearly 57 percent of learners receive placements in local South African industries. The model addresses end to end training needs by capacitating and empowering the youth through skills training. The project uses multiple delivery nodes and multi location trainer incubators. The project is proclaimed to be less cost intensive and can be replicated across spectrum.
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