Programme Director
Honourable Minister Roy Padayachie (in London)
Senior Managers and Government Representatives
Dr Agostinho Zacarias UN and UNDP resident
Members of the International Community, Agencies and Embassies Representatives
Ms Rosey Sekese Director-General, Department of Communications
Collaborative Partners of the Department
Senior Manager of the Department and State Owned Entities
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
We are meeting here today a day after we have celebrated the National Women’s Day, as we were reflecting on the continual progress we are making to uplift the plight of women and challenges ahead. In the 17 years of democratic governance women are still confronted with challenges of poverty, lack of skills and are still oppressed with our homes and institutions. In the information communication technology (ICT) sector we need to double our efforts to ensuring that we cap the imbalances facing us today.
It is common knowledge that for us as a nation, to have an e-skilled society we must get our education foundation phase to the correct path. This government has made education an apex priority and strongly believes that education is not the responsibility of government alone rather societal responsibility.
In July 2011 during the Annual National Assessment of Numeracy and Literacy Skills, President Jacob Zuma urged all South Africans to work together in support of basic education, which is the future of our children and that will lead us toward an e-skilled society.
With the proper foundation from our schooling system I have no doubt in my mind that we can achieved the desired outcome of producing a skilled and economically viable university graduates who are not just job-seekers rather entrepreneurs and innovators who will ensure we realise as the Department of Communications our motto that of “making South Africa a Global Leader in Harnessing ICT for Socio-economic Development”.
The preamble of the Constitution best captures the vision, which aspires to “establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights” and to build a “democratic and open society” in order to “improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person”.
This reminds me of the words of the former Minister of Education; Professor Kader Asmal when he outlined the strategic objective of the government in higher education and this is what he had to say to higher education institutions; “produce graduates who are well rounded and thoroughly grounded; who are skilled and competent; who are creative, flexible and adaptive to new challenges; who are adept in critical thinking and cultural literacy; who are enabled and empowered to participate fully in their economy, their society and their globalising world”.
Towards South Africa’s’ e-Skills Institute
The South African Ministry of Communications has established a new wave of positive change which was launched in November 2010 shortly after our appointment to the ministry. This new wave of change recognises that despite our efforts in the past as a country, we are now slipping down the global e-readiness indicators. This is not because we have not been doing useful things; it just means that others are working harder than we are and this includes many countries that have less opportunity than we do.
As we are aware, the capacity and convergence of new forms of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) includes smart cell phones, tablets and cloud computing, are ‘snowballing’ at unprecedented rates and this will continue to escalate along with reducing costs of acquisition and access. The internal dynamics of many nations are now responding to these impacts and new value propositions are about how best to deal with equity of opportunity, social responsibility, and sustainability are now emerging. These are moving past traditional models of diffusion in a financial cost benefit paradigm. The lessons of Google, Skype, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon are very apparent for all who wish to see.
Global experience and trends emphasise three major issues:
- Traditional cost/benefit analysis approaches are insufficient to determine the impact of the new ICT on business, government, education and civil society and that convergence, diffusion and social media are establishing new value propositions in a broad cross section of national economies
- Aggregation of supply and demand are important keys to establishing and maintaining an equitable socio-economic position in the emerging paradigm of Internet connectivity
- That in dealing with issues of socio-economic equity, there is little alternative but to embrace the new ICT developments rapidly. Nation states with a developmental agenda such as ours which have a relatively higher adoption of mobile devices have an unprecedented opportunity to improve their position in this space much quicker than ever before.
A significant issue for our country revolves around the high proportion of underserved communities which generally have a high adoption rate of cell phones.
Further it is significant that the economic collaboration of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), the largest economic alliance in the world, chose South Africa to become its fifth member country when South Africa is a relative economic and population minnow in comparison to the other members.
This emphasises two major issues:
- The importance that BRICS sees in South Africa within a continental sense
- With a relatively small population, South Africa cannot afford a disaggregated approach to ICT development, appropriation and diffusion whilst all the other members of BRICS have a distinct tendency for centralised economic approaches.
Hence in developing a national approach to addressing the significant challenge that South Africa faces with appropriating ICT right across its society it is vital that it aggregates both supply and demand into larger economies of scale. Disaggregation into small entities that cannot develop sufficient scale to sustain innovative collaborative approaches in a world which increasingly favours increasing economies of scale simply does not make useful sense. This is particularly true for significant issues such as e-Skills that involve a range of traditional disciplines in a rapidly converging space.
So, if South Africa wants to be a serious part of the socio-economic fabric of the world going into the future, we have no real alternative but to seriously engage with the Information Society and the Knowledge-based economies. It is simply true that in going forward, without adequate appropriation of e-skills there can be no sustainable development and there can be no sustainable employment.
Collaboration and cooperation
So, what positives do we have to help us leapfrog up the ladder? Well, firstly, we have a collective approach that involves a number of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs); in many countries these entities are now augmenting to government strategies as they fight increasing economies of scale of global players.
Secondly, we have a surprising amount of dedicated skills and commitment in the right places in our society (in Business, Government, Education and Civil Society) and currently an amazing interest in providing useful support from international business (CISCO, RIM, Samsung, Google, Apple spring to mind), Education (India, South Korea, Cuba, the Eidos University network in Australia, Mexico), donor countries including Finland, Sweden, South Korea to make a difference.
The support of Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) in CISCO over the last two years has been particularly important in this regard.
Thirdly, we are well positioned in terms of the technology leaps that are currently taking place. The convergence of increasing ICT capacity into mobile devices really suits places like South Africa.
Fourthly, we have a plan. The Medium Term Strategic Framework 2009-2014 of the country as a guiding light that can help all of our efforts focus on the very real problems we face.
And lastly, we have a political and leadership will and a lot of good will and interest from the global ICT players and development partners who recognise that South Africa offers a place to develop new approaches to engage with half of the world’s population and that is indeed a very big market. This is a fact that underpins South Africa’s formal inclusion in BRICS.
Now a very big message I constantly hear from across business, education, government and civil society is that we have a very serious mismatch between our current training and education offerings and market demand.
Government will lead and provide the policy framework for a new wave of positive change. What is also very obvious is that with 50 million people and such as big disparity in our people’s fortune that we aren’t big enough to compete amongst ourselves and we don’t have the time to mess around operating in silos of expertise.
To get to where we need to be and to make maximum advantage of the current explosion in ICT mobile capacity we need to develop the means to collaborate across government, business, education, civil society and global development agencies to develop and deliver real change, sustainable change at the local level within the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF), MDGs and WSIS Plan of Action.
Thus to bring all of this together, we have established the e-Skills Institute as a national catalytic collaborator and shaper to address the growing need for coordination and leadership in addressing the very serious skills problem that the country faces in adequately addressing our national strategic goals, MDGs and WSIS Plan of Action.
Because it has recognised the complexity of the converging space of ICT, the e-SI has taken some well-considered time to engage with global IT, service providers across business government, education and civil society in South Africa and beyond to develop an inclusive e-Skills Plan of Action (NeSPA) that has strong stakeholder support and maximises opportunities in the current ICT developmental space.
It is obvious that there is a great need to formally converge the activities of a number of existing entities so that a more inclusive approach can be developed, delivered and measured in innovative ways.
Now we have learnt from past experience that simply throwing money at existing systems has a very mixed level of success when it comes to delivering against the real needs of our country. We now know that we have approach these things collectively across the board from the top down and from the bottom up; we have to take notice of what is happening elsewhere and we have to apply lessons within the context of our own environment.
This is what the New Wave of Positive Change within the ministry and the National e-Skills Plan of Action are about. We must build this new approach of e-Skills based on a demonstrated commitment and success. This is not only to ensure that we are building on solid ground but also to demonstrate to others that the way ahead must be about genuine effort that is based on sound integration of technology addressing local needs in an integrated manner within a realistic achievement framework at the local level.
This is simply a wonderful opportunity for us all. Our job over the next day is to provide the leadership in developing a global contributory framework to enable e-skilling South Africa for equitable prosperity and global competitiveness.
I am very excited about the approach that we have taken together with our leading partner the UN/UNDP and I look forward to the outcome of the workshop. I urge you all to participate fully in the workshop, to look towards ways that we can collaborate and build a sustainable effort that is ‘owned’ by us all and that can demonstrate impact on our strategic plans to provide a more equitable and prosperous nation that can be a useful example to others.
Good Luck with you deliberations.
I thank you.
Source: Department of Communications
