INTERVIEW SUPREME ICT ACADEMY
Building Skills For the Future S
upreme ICT Academy began in 2016 with a collective staff experience of more than 60 years. The Academy’s vision is to implement a blended training delivery approach to offer flexible options for our customers and learners. The Covid-19 pandemic ensured that the organisation accelerated the implementation of blended training delivery. Passionate about empowering the youth through skills development, Mr. Bonisile (Boni) Gantile, Founder & MD of Supreme ICT Academy, sits down for a discussion on the importance of Digital Skills for the future of work. Q. What are the Academy’s main values and objectives? A. Supreme ICT aims to assist organisations and individuals to build the ICT and management skills they require to execute their plans. For the solution to be effective there must be understanding what generic or specific problem solution is addressing. Supreme is guided by the following values:
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Listen and Seek to understand
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Link the solution to address identified problem
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Honesty and integrity in all our dealings
Q. Please unpack yur role at Supreme ICT Academy. A. I am the founding member and the Managing Director. Thus, my role is to map the direction in which we move so that it is relevant, delivers value to the society and is sustainable. I also assist in facilitating supplementary work readiness workshops for participants in our employability programmes. Q. Your organisation holds an experienced team of facilitators and curriculum designers. What is your opinion on the current state of youth employability and lack of work readiness in SA? A. Unemployment levels in our country are extremely high; this is a ticking time bomb that needs urgent attention. Unemployment
50 | Public Sector Leaders | September 2021
is, however, not an easy problem to solve. I am of the opinion that there are two critical dependencies to solving the problem, one dependency being the capacity of the economy to create sustainable jobs, and the other being the employability profile of the unemployed population. Q. What do you believe are the key factors that will increase the employability of our youth? A. Sometimes we make the mistake of treating ‘unemployment’ and ‘employability’ as if they are the same. The two are related, but are different. For example, one may be highly employable yet find oneself unemployed if the economy cannot accommodate all employable candidates. Equally, one may be unemployed to their employability profile, whilst there are sufficient jobs in the economy - in this case the economy may import skills whilst the locals remain unemployed. Employability is the level to which one’s profile matches the skill demand profile of the economy.
