There is a top of funnel skills problem in South African tech: the education system is producing too few employable tech graduates because too few learners get the foundations at school, and higher education is not responding to market demand for tech skills.
“The ICT skills gap in South Africa is real. In Australia, they talk of needing 100 000 more ICT practitioners on top of the almost 800 000 they have now. Here, we have two parts to that number – perhaps 50 000 more ICT practitioners in the short to medium term but millions of people must be up-skilled to use the technology that is made available by the practitioner community.”
South Africa’s basic education system is failing to produce enough learners with the foundational skills required to pursue further study that leads to tech careers.
The BankSETA, a South African training authority for the financial services sector, makes the following comment on the education system in its Sector Skills Plan 2020-2025.
“For every one hundred learners who enter the schooling system, only thirty-seven pass matric and only four finally complete with a full complete university degree.
Of a hundred job seekers, only 4 will hold a complete degree, thirty-three will hold a matric certificate and sixty-three will hold some form of schooling.”
In addition to a poorly performing school system, South African higher education institutions are not responding to the rapidly growing demand for tech skills.
Answering in a parliamentary Q&A session, minister of higher education, science and technology Blade Nzimande said that 2,843 undergraduate students completed a Computer and Information Science degree in 2017 (the latest year of record).
This is an increase of less than 200 students compared to 2014’s graduate data (2,670), and is substantially less than other STEM fields such as engineering which had 12,956 graduates in 2017.
Source: BusinessTech, September 2019
The poor foundations laid in primary and secondary schooling, and the disconnect between higher education and tech skills demand is costing South Africa dearly: employers can’t find the skills they need locally.
South African employers struggle to recruit critically skilled workers.
ICT (tech) skills are at the top of the scarce skills list.
To make matters worse, 1 in 4 skilled South African developers are actively planning to emigrate and 4 in 5 are open to international opportunities, attracted by higher earnings potential, and now lower barriers to entry, given the acceleration of remote working and distributed development, thanks to COVID-19.
The growing skill gap is forcing local firms to look internationally to meet their skills needs. The percentage of employers responding to the JCSE-IITPSA ICT Skills Survey who are recruiting overseas has risen to 37% in 2019, continuing a long term trend.
According to the report:
“With the very high level of unemployment (particularly among young people), this is a disturbing trend, as South Africa is not making inroads into the opportunity to skill and employ locally. There continues to be a steady stream of applications for “critical skills visas” via the South African embassies and consulates, as the country remains a desirable destination for ICT practitioners from some of our African neighbours and from India.”
What a missed opportunity! South Africa is losing tech skills to international demand, and instead of replacing these lost skills through training its own unemployed youth, it is importing talent.
To address its tech skills gap, South Africa needs to ensure more of its young people are exposed to fundamental tech skills, and create more demand-driven pathways for young people to access professional training linked to industry needs. We believe self-driven, online learning offers the best opportunity to do this at scale.