THE PULSE
PLUGGED IN | THOUGHT LEADERSHIP – JOB CREATION
LEARNERSHIPS MUST PRIORITISE DIGITAL SKILLS Rajan Naidoo, director of EduPower Skills Academy, writes that giving young South Africans access to critical digital skills delivers social and business value
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outh Africa may have produced Mark Shuttleworth and Elon Musk, some of the brightest digital minds in the world today, but the vast majority of our school leavers will matriculate without ever switching on a computer. This is a massive injustice as digital skills are essential to employability and have the potential to move the needle on South Africa’s devastating youth unemployment. Rajan Our school Naidoo education system does not provide large-scale access to hardware and software, so many young people have never even encountered a computer. But the majority of nonphysical skilled jobs require some level of digital skills, so first-time job seekers with no computer experience are highly unlikely to be successful in their job search. Instead, they will become a statistic in South Africa’s youth unemployment rate, which was recorded as 65.5 per cent for the first quarter of 2022 in Stats SA’s latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey. This means that two in every three youngsters won’t find a job – but even basic digital skills could be the difference between disappointment and opportunity.
EMPLOYABILITY Digital skills can be the tools needed to mitigate poverty, unemployment and inequality as they improve employability and enable livelihood opportunities. More advanced digital skills such as software development can unlock exciting opportunities to actively participate in the emerging and competitive digital economy. As educators and training providers, it falls on us to assist young people to develop the skills sets relevant to market needs. Through learnerships, I am confident we can empower enough young South Africans with economically desirable and sustainable skills so that they have the tools to improve their circumstances and impact the unemployment rate.
LEARNERSHIPS To ensure that learners are given every opportunity, companies funding learnerships for unemployed youth must double-check that digital skills are front and centre in the programme and that the skills taught are put into practice throughout the duration of the learnership. It’s one thing having a room full of computers, but for learners to become confident with this technology, they have to
Digital skills can be the tools needed to mitigate poverty, unemployment and inequality as they improve employability and enable livelihood opportunities.
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work at it every day. When they first enrol at EduPower, around 30 per cent of our learners have never worked on a computer before and around 80 per cent have no experience working in MS Word or Excel. By the time they graduate though, they will be proficient in both these packages. To achieve this, regardless of the learnership registered for, learners are all introduced to digital skills from the get-go as part of the academy’s work-readiness programme. Run in tandem with the learnership, the programme’s purpose is to bridge the digital skills gap and dramatically improve the learner’s employability.
HIGHER-LEVEL IT QUALIFICATIONS The academy’s IT-focused learnerships take this a step further as using a computer is core to the learnership. There are higher-level IT learnerships where special digital skills such as digital languages and programming are taught. These learnerships are increasing in popularity, and the number of learners enrolling is growing as companies use their skills development budgets to effectively build and deliver capabilities for their future digital requirements. This ongoing collaboration with our clients is vital in making an impact on the challenges faced by the country and its unemployed youth. By partnering with like-minded organisations to drive access to education and equip the South Africans that need it the most with the skills they need to compete in the digital economy of today and the future, we are creating real sustainable value that is delivering social and business value. ▪
VOICE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
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