Despite the current global recession the digital economy continues to grow and as a result, needs digital and ICT skills to fuel its requirements. Harambee collaborated with many organisations that are equally motivated to make a difference to the livelihoods of young people in South Africa to produce the Harambee Mapping of Digital and ICT Roles and Demand for South Africa Survey. This research aims to understand where the demand for entry-level talent exists and how we can bring young people into a growing digital world.
CapaCiTi recognises that collaboration and partnering is paramount when at least 3 million jobs have already been lost this year, and young, talented South Africans taking the brunt of lack of opportunities.
“We cannot solve this crisis alone – an economy focussing on regrowth needs innovation forged from key partnerships and collaboration. CapaCiTi is proud to be a member of the SHIFT partnership with Harambee and welcomes the publication of the Harambee Mapping of Digital and ICT Roles and Demand for South Africa Survey and the extensive insights it offers,” says Fiona Tabraham, the Chief Executive at CapaCiTi.
She adds that at CapaCiTi, we believe that there are significant growth and employment opportunities in the digital economy, but in order to provide our youth access to these opportunities, we need to build an effective skills pipeline, aligned with demand and credentialed in a way that the industry recognises and values.
“CapaCiTi’s investment in training for vendor certification such as Microsoft Technology Associate and AWS Cloud Foundation Practitioner and Solutions Architect is well aligned with the industry needs highlighted in the report for desktop support technicians, junior software developers, and data analysts.”
The fieldwork for this survey was conducted at a time of sudden, unexpected and extraordinary change brought on by the global COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, all 102 small, medium and large South African enterprises that participated in the survey, agreed unanimously that they are facing workplace challenges that have never been seen before. Businesses are changing how they work which has resulted in greater skills, talent and hiring challenges.
If you are an organisation looking at maximising your digital skills pipeline, CapaCiTi can help. Get in touch with Chief Executive Fiona Tabraham at fionat@capaciti.org.za to partner for future success.