opening of the CISCO networking academy programme, University of Pretoria
5 March 2007
Vice Chancellor Callie Pistorius
Cisco Africa CEO, Shahab Meshki
Thank you for inviting me. I am very pleased to be here for two very simple
reasons.
The first reason is this. When Alfie Hamid invited me to this event, he
attached a 'white paper' to the letter of invitation he sent. The 'white paper'
was commissioned by Cisco last year. I was struck by some of the data it
contained. It revealed that we are already short of about 70 000 networking
professionals (general - basic routing and switching; and more advanced -
security, wireless, and IP telephony).
The 'white paper' also suggested that these shortages would have a
significant impact on our ability to grow as an economy. However, it did
indicate that our Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa
(AsgiSA) initiative had already, and I quote, "put in place a framework to
address this; the framework is now putting the necessary skills foundation in
place to support economic growth." However, it continued "Skills gaps are
evident not only in the area of general networking skills, but also in advanced
technologies."
The second reason that I am happy to be here is that I was not aware of how
deep, broad, and committed Cisco's involvement in South African transformation
is, with 38 networking academies, the first established as long ago as
1999.
It is a remarkable commitment and a remarkable investment.
Now I know that your business is not in the web but in keeping the net
maintained � all the cables and computers that make the web possible - routing
all those packets of information along the links between those millions of
computers and servers so that the 3 million internet users in South Africa can
surf the web to upload and download information.
It is the infrastructure that is primarily - not totally because our
interest in Information Technology (IT) is broad - our concern in government.
President Mbeki noted in his State of the Nation Address this year that the
high cost of telecommunications was costing business too much in South Africa.
With the second fixed line operator and with a new state owned firm entering
the broadband market soon, the costs of communication are likely to decline
significantly in the near future.
The Minister of Public Enterprises, Alex Erwin said only last month:
"Broadband is viewed as a key driver of economic growth and wealth generation
and therefore is essential for South Africa to gain access to universally
available, reliable and affordable broadband."
Currently there are less than half a million broadband connections in South
Africa, but over 3 million South Africans have internet access (cellphone,
fixed line or dial up).
The IT sector in South Africa, with around 40 listed companies, is growing
significantly and most of you here today can look forward to rewarding and
gainful employment in the future.
In the white paper Cisco sent to me there were two quotes at the beginning.
The one was the famous one from President Mandela about the importance of
education. The other is the following, from Cisco CEO John Chambers.
"I truly believe that the Internet and education are the two great
equalisers in life, levelling the playing field for people, companies, and
countries worldwide."
Levelling the playing field! Education can certainly level the playing
field, but it can also create inequalities where they did not exist before.
It is the idea of the internet as a great leveller that is most intriguing.
What he means, I think, is that the spread of information makes us all more
equal than before. The more we all have direct access to knowledge � rather
than having to pay professionals to tell us what ails us or how to spend our
money - the better our lives will be.
The idea of levelling the playing field has been taken up in the metaphor of
a "flat world" by the Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Thomas Friedman in his
new book 'The World is Flat' (Penguin, 2006). What he shows is that wherever
you now turn hierarchies are being challenged from below or are transforming
themselves from top-down structures into more horizontal and collaborative
ones. The net has facilitated that process, has flattened the world in the
process of globalisation.
To give you one example that caught my eye. There is a huge business in
school maths, science or English tutoring among American children. But the
tutors are Indians in India and not in America. The American children sit at
home in front of their computers and talk through the internet to their tutors
millions of miles away in Delhi or Calcutta. Homework tuition has been
outsourced to another country; the skills are there, the costs of tutoring are
lower in India than in America.
So the internet has encouraged the development of the world's periphery like
at no other time in the world's history. If we did not believe this, then the
fear of a global meltdown as a result of the Chinese stock market collapse last
week will have convinced you.
Of course, the development of China and India into science and technology
global contenders did not happen overnight. Governments chose to invest in
technology and scientific education.
We are now used to China as a producer of low-cost manufactures (50% of the
world's cameras; 30% of all air conditioners; 25% of its washing machines).
We are also used to India as the location for call centres, software and
back-office services.
But now we have to get used to China and India as world class centres for
scientific research.
Since 1999 China's spending on research has increased by 20% each year. In
2005 it reached 1,3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and is now third in the
global league table behind Japan and the US. It plans to boost spending to 2%
of GDP by 2010 and 2,5% by 2050.
In India the spending on Research and Development (R&D) is more in line
with our own � 0,8% of GDP, but their science budgets have been increasing by
far more than ours over the last decade.
Most astonishing is their number of graduates and undergraduates. There are
about 14 million university graduates with less then seven years of work
experience � twice the number of Americans. This reservoir of graduates
increases each year by 2,5 million new graduates in IT, engineering and life
sciences, along with 650 000 postgraduates and around 6 000 PhDs.
South Africa cannot compete with the numbers, but we can take advantage of
how the internet can assist us to improve our education and training systems.
We have begun to learn from the policies adopted in Asian countries, and to
benefit from academies like this, to encourage a reverse migration of skills or
even to tap into South African skills located abroad. The internet has made it
possible. It is no longer a question of ideas and innovation flowing from the
rich to the poor nations. In the last 30 years global supply chains have
transformed how we make products and ideas.
We used to rely on new ideas coming from the universities and major
companies in the US and Europe. Ideas flowed from this innovative core to the
idea-and-technology-dependent periphery. This is no longer the case. The core
and periphery are being scrambled up. Places that were on the margins of
innovation ten years ago � Bangalore and Pune in India, Daejon in Korea,
Shanghai and Shenzhen in China � are now essential stops in the continuous flow
of people, ideas and technologies around the world.
South Africa has joined the scrambled-up world and academies like this will
assist us in pushing more and more young people into the exciting field of IT.
There are many examples of South African innovation and of young people taking
advantage of the opportunities that the internet has opened up. We have much to
be proud of.
Government's role is to facilitate that process, to assist young people to
develop the basic skills that are necessary to understand how IT works.
We now see skills as a basic component of future prosperity. The acquisition
and productive deployment of skills have become our main policy objectives. The
new curriculum has been designed to enable our children to be successful in the
global world of the 21st century. It is for this reason that our Government has
been quick to seize the opportunity of working towards the achievement of the
practical benefits of digital technology. Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) is the future and indeed the key to 21st Century teaching and
learning. This can be seen in our focus on basic literacy and numeracy at
school, our focus on new vocational learning, and our focus on skills for the
knowledge economy at university.
We have sought to grapple with the lack of parity between vocational and
academic qualifications, and the corrosive impact this has on the motivations
and attitudes of distinct groups of learners in our system.
IT skills can be learned at college or at university and it is the one area
of life in which the rewards appear to favour the lower on the traditional
ladder. There are lots of examples to follow in our country. Follow them.
Issued by: Department of Education
5 March 2007
