Information Technology
ICT is the answer to South Africa’s
youth unemployment While South Africa’s youth unemployment rate rampantly soars, the country’s digital skills shortage is expanding at its seams. Information Communication Technology (ICT) skills are the rarest ever on record, especially among women, but urgent intervention from the likes of Prudence Mathebula is helping stop things from getting a lot worse, before getting any better. As the founder and managing director of Dynamic DNA, Mathebula knows that addressing the country’s critical skills mismatch head-on is the only way of improving the future of our youth, and our country. Through her training and skill development company, the 32-year-old Soweto-born entrepreneur is determined to close the digital skills gap for companies and upskill as many of the eight million, underprivileged and unemployed 15 to 34-yearolds as possible. “By giving them the right skills for tomorrow’s job market, they can competently be absorbed into the labour force,” she explains. Her passion for skills development came ablaze after she completed a degree in B-BBEE management at the University of Witwatersrand and joined Dynamic Visual Technologies (DVT). While implementing a skills development programme that she had single handily secured funding for and registered with the MICT SETA, Mathebula was stunned to find so few black ICT professionals and especially women. Unafraid of hard work and with perseverance, she spearheaded the concept of Dynamic DNA literally overnight.
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“I saw an opportunity that other training providers were not doing but which was desperately needed in the ICT sector and that was providing companies with faster access to SETA grant funding, and learners with practical learning and mentoring component making them employable,” she says. It’s certainly a step in the right direction but Mathebula identifies three major stumbling blocks that hinder hopes of meaningful progress unless companies commit to youth skills development to close the digital skills gap and more young people choose ICT as a career.
www.futuresa.co.za
