With its young and tech-savvy population, South Africa should be leaps and bounds ahead of many countries when it comes to the IT economy.
But there’s a very real IT skills gap – and all stakeholders need to throw their weight behind this massive challenge.
A round-table discussion with training experts, hosted by Channelwise and CompTIA, clarified some of the issues and made some valuable suggestions on how we can rectify this increasingly worrying scenario.
Kathy Gibson reports
The IT skills gap in South Africa is nothing new, and stakeholders have been consistent in their call for change at the foundational level.
“It’s an accepted fact that the current curriculum is simply not aligned to industry needs – and this is where the first efforts must be made to address it,” says Alta Truter from NIL.
As things stand, she points out there are massive skills gaps in critical areas like security, AI, data analysis, and DevOps all of which are only expected to grow over time. So, without improving the curriculum, efforts in transformation will continue to be hampered.
When it comes to role training, the employer still plays the biggest role in ensuring workplace skills are in place, Truter says.
But she warns that employers need to avoid letting skills development become a box-ticking exercise. Instead, training needs to be aligned to business outcomes and growth trajectories.
Sol-Tech’s Innes Potgieter agrees that skills need to align to the jobs students will encounter in the workplace.
“We try to assist students with real-world skills,” he says.
Sol-Tech evolved from a trade school, adding IT certification as these skills become more necessary for the young people coming through its doors.
“We try to support students to help them succeed in their endeavours.”
Potgieter notes that cybersecurity is an in-demand skill, with the CompTIA-certified security courses among the most popular that Sol-Tech offers. Data, cloud, networking, and IT support are also in demand.
Soft skills are also important when it comes to preparing young people for work, Potgieter adds. “So we help with entrepreneurship, adaptability, communication, and problem solving.”
We all have the same challenges, says Jeanne De Beer from Impactful. “I don’t think the employer is playing a big enough role: training is still very much a tick-box exercise.”
A big contributor to the skills mismatch is that companies are not connecting the dots between business outcomes and training directions.
“In South Africa, we still have such a low uptake on cloud training. But 40% of corporates have moved to the cloud.”
This frustration about organisations not aligning training to skills gaps is a recurrent theme among the training institutions.
“Companies need to get their workforces ready, and this is where we pitch CompTIA skills assessments, so they can start to connect the dots.”
The big part of the problem is that the human resources (HR) department often doesn’t understand IT, says Hanri Labuschagne of CTU Training.
Truter agrees, explaining that HR generally gets a training budget, asks for input from IT – which doesn’t necessarily understand the leadership and management development (LMD) aspects of the HR remit, and so simply allows HR to tick the requisite boxes.
“But is this aligned with the business? No, it’s not. Because HR assumes that it’s correct because they don’t understand where the business is moving.”
Currently, a lot of skills development decisions are being driven by individuals rather than the organisations they work for.
“If I look at the business that we’re getting, almost half of our revenue comes from individuals that are working at a company,” says CompTIA’s Loraine Vorster. “They are doing their own certifications, and picking what they want to further their career.
“We do a lot of quotes for individuals: it’s not coming from the IT manager or line of business manager, but from the individual, who is taking skills development into their own hands.”
Kobus Olivier of Boston City Campus, agrees, explaining that many companies rely on individuals keeping themselves skilled – and even passing the obligation for education on to them.
This can be counter-productive for companies, Vorster adds, as employees who have taken charge of their own training are less likely to stay with the company. And the reality is that private learning far outpaces what is happening in the formal sector.
De Beer adds that individuals are funding their own certifications in things like project management and ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library). “Maybe this is because they don’t want to be tied to the workspace, but we are seeing a lot of people registering for training on private emails.
“We are also seeing a lot of microlearning and a big uptake on webinars.”
Tinashe Banya from Dynamic DNA, says its important for training providers to ensure they are aligned with workplace realities.
“There is a difference between certification and skill, with the skill being of paramount importance. That’s why we are bringing mentoring and coaching into the classroom.”
As an example, he says a senior developer would be paired with a certified trainer to offer classes on DevOps.
Dynamic DNA also does frequent skill checks, with four weeks of training followed by a presentation by students of what they have learned to industry experts.
This combination of traditional training, mentoring, and coaching – and preparation for the world of work – is underpinned by the CompTIA certification, Banya adds.
“We implement our own training methods, but by the time we are finished, we have built scarce skills.”
The support of business and senior industry experts is critical to the success of this method in the ever-evolving technology industry.
Olivier says the work experience is important. “Curricula could be fantastic but often they are not executed. When I interview IT personnel, I am often shocked at how people have gone through the programmes, but prove to be incompetent when you evaluate their abilities.”
This is why employers should check on practical experience as well, Banya adds.
Part of this problem boils down to the key performance indicators (KPIs) that people are measured against, according to Pieter Nel of NetCampus.
“In a typical organisation, the people doing procurement are trying to drive down the pricing – so they will do whatever they need to do to reach that KPI. And this probably means submitting the Workplace Skills Plan (WSP) and claiming the money back.”
Buying into a learning management system sounds like a great idea in that it offers a huge amount of content from various sources, and allows users to proceed at their own pace.
“But there’s no logical follow-through,” Nel adds. “In essence, what it comes down to is that organisations need to change the KPI of learning. It can’t be how many manuals or exams have been sold: it has to be aligned to what the actual problem is that you are trying to solve for.
“And the content has to be delivered by people certified to do so.”
Another problem with companies that stick rigidly to KPIs such as cost is that they could end up eliminating jobs entirely, as has happened in some enterprises that have outsourced their entire IT function
AI and curriculum flexibility
Nel adds that companies need to move away from their traditional hierarchical workplace structures when it comes to IT. “This is what all the research is indicating. But, when companies look at skills shortages, they go back to their hierarchical structures and look at staff numbers rather than how things like AI could be augmented and help reduce the skills gaps.”
Olivier agrees that AI is going to have a major effect on the IT skills environment. “It’s very much the elephant in the room: in five years’ time, what will a security specialist or network administrator look like?
“For instance, networks can now configure themselves, do fault-finding, and even fix problems. They predict what might go wrong. If you look at where the technology is going compared to the curriculum we’re being taught today, we are going to have to remove 60% of the content because it’s no longer relevant.”
“The question then is what happens to the networking technician?” Olivier asks. “We need to be developing the curriculum. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but the fact that we know it will happen should prompt us to make some serious decisions.
“There has to be a complete revamp, a mindset change, in the fundamental basic concepts of how we approach education and what it’s going to look like for five years.”
Truter agrees that the training providers should look at future-proofing content to ensure it aligns with the changes AI is going to bring to various technology disciplines.
Many training providers do build this kind of flexibility into their curricula, but Labuschagne thinks all of the stakeholders need to be involved in keeping content up to date.
“We tend to change the curriculum throughout the year to stay updated with the technology. The IT vendors should also be more involved in helping us to design training and learning. We used to update courses every three years, now it is every three months – but I think that three months is not even quick enough. And everyone needs to get involved – the vendors, the training providers, the board of learning, and the certification authorities.”
Torque IT’s Kirosha Naidoo concurs with the other panellists that training providers should be working more closely with business to understand their needs today, and how they want to evolve.
“Most of them depend upon us to provide the right skills sets. And they all feel that their house is in order – until it’s not.”
Eduvos’s Suhayl Husein Asmal points out that there’s often a delay in the skills needed by companies and the uptake in those courses, and that this contributes to the skills gap.
“Then, when it comes to curriculum development, we’re always looking at ways of making the curriculum practical. So work-integrated learning is important, whether it’s project based or something else that you can implement on campuses.”
Asmal agrees with other speakers on how AI is going to change the IT workspace. “For instance, what is the cybersecurity person’s job going to look like? It’s basically going to be a technician going and replacing hardware – they’re not going to actually configure it. They’re not really going to do anything. As soon as they plug it in, it’s going to set itself up – and the company is going to implement best practices based on what the AI set up and on the device.
“So we are sitting with the situation where the technology is evolving rapidly in the last two years.”
The topic of AI is a touchy one, Asmal adds. First of all, there is an understandable fear that it will make people’s jobs redundant.
At the same time, a lot of companies are still grappling with how they will implement it. “So how do we train students in the modern world about how to implement AI when the jobs and the companies they will work for don’t fully understand what AI is and how it fits in.
“It needs to be a multi-pronged approach where the business sector and the education sector meet. Because, as much as we can put out content, it may or may not be used.”
There is room for a lot more discussion between business and training providers to ensure that training is relevant to the jobs being filled.
“The reality is, are we really training people for what actually exists?” Asmal asks.
Foundational skills
Vorster agrees that new technologies need to be taught, but reiterates that this can’t be at the expense of teaching the fundamentals.
“Foundational skills are an important component in training because IT employees need the basic knowledge.
“Technology is changing all the time, but when we do skills assessments for companies, we usually find skills at the foundational level are lacking. And this has consequences, because you can’t build on something that’s not there.”
Asmal concurs that every student should be exposed to fundamentals. “This helps them to understand the core concepts.”
But the concern about foundational skills goes further, says Olivier.
“The number of students taking STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects is declining at an alarming rate,” Olivier says.
When it comes to foundational skills, Naidoo believes that STEM interventions that target youngsters in the final years of high school, or even tertiary education, are too late.
For instance, CompTIA exams can only be written from the age of 13 in South Africa, but we could be targeting even younger children, she says.
“I feel like, if we are going to try to infiltrate the youth market, we need to get them at that age where they are a little bit more impressionable.
“If you think about it, a child starts pre-school often at the age of three. By the time they’re in Grade seven, they’re nine years into school – so we are targeting them a decade into schooling, and then we’re expecting them to grab on to technology.
“How can we get the AI essentials learning into primary school level? Because we tend to underestimate the kids at those levels – the Grade fours, the Grade threes – they probably know a lot more than we do because they are evolving at such a fast rate.”
Naidoo points out that, if a three-year-old can master the game of chess, eight- and nine-year-olds should have no problem with basic IT skills. “We can start introducing them to AI skills, cybersecurity skills, all of those skills we’re trying to bridge with corporates and fully-grown adults.”
Introducing these skills earlier will help to alleviate the burden of young people trying to acquire them later on when they are no longer able to learn as quickly or easily.
Of course, this has to start with upskilling teachers and keeping them up-to-date on the latest technologies.
“Even where IT is taught, little is being spent on keeping the teachers up to date,” says Naidoo.
Truter suggests that students face a more compelling challenge: that critical thinking is missing from their schooling.
Part of the reason for this, she says, is that it’s possible to graduate from high school without doing senior-level maths. “So that critical thinking is gone.”
And this is a problem that no one stakeholder will be able to solve alone, Nel points out. “We can’t be afraid to collaborate,” he says. “We need to take hands and make a difference. We talk about the youth being a ticking time bomb, and it is a significant problem – one that none of us can solve on our own.”
Truter agrees, pointing to the large number of unemployed university graduates. “They have spent years working for their degrees and families have been saving for generational change that is supposed to change their futures – and they can’t find a job.”
Entrepreneurship is touted as one way that graduates can take a meaningful part in society, she says, but the fundamental issue if that the system is pushing out skills for which there are no available jobs.
“Schools do the youth a disservice by not focusing on job requirements,” Truter says. “We are not a country of entrepreneurs: people chase a job.
“The universities need to be having these discussions.”
The digital divide
Experts agree that the current education and skills development environment is not doing enough to bridge the digital divide.
“We have to ask where South Africa stands overall in terms of skills,” says Engelbrecht. “In the cities, most of us have access to data and to technology, but what about people in the rural areas? How do we address those skills shortfalls? How do we equip people from under-resourced schools to have opportunities?”
One company that is trying to do just this is Ikusasa Technology Solutions, which was founded to bridge this specific skills gap.
“We are funded by the SETAs (Sector Education and Training Authorities) and work in underserved communities,” says founder Thulisile Dlamini.
“We work in the rural areas, among the Quintile1 schools, and the situation is dire.”
Many of these schools don’t have maths or science teachers at all, and ambitious youngsters see no alternative but to move to the cities. “When there is nothing happening at home, they have to try to make their luck elsewhere.
“We need to be making a difference in these schools.”
Often when youngsters choose their subjects or study courses, they aren’t aligned with what companies are looking for.
“I’m not just talking about the education space: we are all working in silos,” Dlamini says. “I see people with IT qualifications, but they are not the right ones.
“The industry needs to be talking to the institutions, and funding them, so the certifications are related to what the industry wants.
“These are the conversations we need to be having.”
Ikusasa has had some singular success in making these connections. “We first talk to companies about what skills they need, then align our programmes to the business.
“And we have been able to get about 80% absorption.”
Digital learning
Self-paced learning, and online training in particular, is becoming more popular around the world – but there are questions about how effective it is.
Truter relates how one of South Africa’s big banks signed a contract with an online training provider and allowed their staff access to all the self-paced courses.
“We did an audit for the client, which found that just 6% of the courses had actually been completed. The company had paid for the licences, and workers had logged on – but very few of the staff had actually completed the courses. And then there’s no certification either, and nobody follows up.”
De Beer adds that companies are signing up with digital learning platforms because they believe it saves them money.
“But now people are expected to learn after hours; there is no peer-to-peer learning or human interaction – people are expected to do it all on their own.”
Because little thought has gone into how people would prefer to learn, De Beer says activation rates are low, and learning outcomes are poor.
“Learning from a computer is different from classroom learning and can be ineffective. It takes a high level of self-discipline to do, and there is no interaction with other people – which people want.”
Truter adds that many learners simply skip through e-learning courses without learning much, and without gaining any practical experience.
Olivier believes online learning can be effective if it is properly executed and applied.
“Don’t underestimate the value of e-learning. If we want to train lots of people, we have to use what’s available and out there.”
Nel adds that e-learning systems that incorporate AI could be valuable in helping students on their learning journeys.
In fact, says Olivier, a lot of the negative perception of e-learning platforms is due to the fact that too many people are implementing it wrong.
But Banya points out that many learners’ environments are not conducive to e-learning, particularly if there is a lot of noise, unstable Internet, or no WiFi.
“When it comes to learners in rural areas, these issues are even worse.
“Not everyone can learn online, and some people can’t work from home. We need to have different ways to work with them.”
Continuous learning
In the modern world, technology changes rapidly so it’s critical that employees keep their qualifications up to date.
Short courses can help them to keep their skills and the certifications relevant, says Olivier.
De Beer says lifelong learning can take many forms including certification, social forums, and peer learning – and training institutions should be able to offer more flexible alternatives.
CompTIA enables continuous education through its multi renewal offering, says the organisation’s Rendo Rust.