Programme director
Distinguished guests
Captains and representatives of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry
Delegates
Ladies and gentlemen
It gives me pleasure to address you at this important event in the calendar of the ICT industry in our country. I would like to begin by commending those responsible for organising this gathering for a job well done. Further more, the participation of government through the Ministry of Communications should be seen as testimony that government is committed to the effective use of ICTs, to address the many social challenges we face as a nation.
The ICT Career Expo is an initiative by the Ministry of Communications' Meraka e-Skills Institute in collaboration with Telkom, Meraka Institute at Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and 24 ICT focused Further Education and Training (FET) Colleges. This is in line with the 2009 Medium Term Strategic Framework which states that it is important to support FET Colleges and to link them with business, industry, and other advanced education and training programmes to among other things, achieve the following:
* Create awareness about career opportunities within the ICT sector and to profile the ICT related youth development programmes within the Department of Communications and the Department's portfolio organisations.
* Expose the students to the importance of the ICT Sector in the economy of South Africa.
* Facilitate an opportunity for students to interact with experienced industry professionals, and also afford them an opportunity to do site visits to Government and corporate ICT facilities.
* Provide an opportunity for students to experience first-hand different ICT applications, e.g. animation, voice over IP, etc.
The government has placed the issue of education in general and skills development in particular high on the list of its priorities for the next five years. We are of the firm view that a nation with a skilled workforce will always be in a better position to respond to global social and economic challenges of any nature.
The key question to address as a nation is how we utilise ICTs to contribute to the fight against social ills such poverty and the many diseases that continue to ravage our communities. How do we make ICTs relevant to the lives of our people, regardless of one's geographical location?
Technological developments in the 20th century have transformed the majority of wealth creating work from physically based to knowledge based. Technology and knowledge are now key factors of production. With the increased mobility of information and the global work force, knowledge and expertise can be transported instantaneously around the world, and any advantage gained by one company can be eliminated by competitive improvements overnight.
The only comparative advantage a company will enjoy will be its process of innovation combining market and technology know how with the creative talents of knowledge workers to solve a constant stream of competitive problems, and its ability to derive value from information. We are now an Information Society, in a Knowledge Economy where knowledge is essential. The term "Information Society" describes a society in which the creation, distribution, and manipulation of information is the most significant economic and cultural activity.
An Information Society may be contrasted with societies in which the economic underpinning is primarily industrial or agrarian. A "Knowledge Economy" is one in which the generation and exploitation of knowledge play a predominant part in the creation of wealth. The productivity and competitiveness of units or agents in the economy such as individuals, firms, regions or nations, depend mainly on their capacity to generate, process and efficiently apply knowledge based information.
Information is both the currency and the product. Though we have always relied on exchanging information in doing our jobs and running our lives, the information society is different in that more relevant information can be collected and used whenever it is needed. Consequently, production in the knowledge economy can be fine tuned in ways heretofore undreamed of.
Many economically productive jobs depend entirely on the manipulation of information. What makes information plentiful in the Knowledge Economy is the pervasive use of ICTs. The Medium Term Strategic Framework of 2009 states clearly that it is important to accelerate the socio-economic development of South Africa by increasing access to as well as uptake and usage (and by implication skills development) of ICTs through partnerships with business and civil society.
Coming to demand for ICT skills, it is important to note that South Africa does not compare well with other countries in terms of ICT skills availability. Research regarding the underlying reasons, and measurements related to them, show that South Africa scores poorly in terms of youth interest in science, quality of mathematics and science education, government prioritisation of ICT and the extent of staff training. This results in ICT skills not being readily available for industry.
Researchers consistently report an ICT skills shortage although they disagree on actual numbers. For example the IT-Web JCSE survey in 2008 predicts that the real skills shortage going into 2009 can be as high as 70 000 practitioners - more than 25% of the current work force. This gap, according to the survey, will not be closed by retention policies or in-work skills development programmes. This same survey also indicated that its prediction is nearly twice as large as the more than 37 thousand given in the master scarce skills list produced by the Department of Labour in 2008.
These numbers refer to ICT specialist only and not to ICT users within organisations and in society generally. Specifically in the South African context, the low percentage of learners matriculating with mathematics and physical science subjects at higher grade limits the number of students taking university ICT courses. Short courses offered by the private sector are not solving the problem entirely either, although there is considerable diversity of provision and independent assessment centres which can safeguard the legitimacy of qualifications.
A recent analysis of advanced ICT related skills curricula for first degrees at the public South African institutions of higher education and training (HET) found that universities recorded a decline in the number of students enrolling for ICT related degrees since 2002, and hence a decline in the number qualifying students since 2005. This has been confirmed by various other studies.
This trend can be attributed, in part, to the downturn in the ICT economy just after 2000, disillusionment with course content, lack of information on employment opportunities and the perception that ICT courses are difficult. Hence recruitment campaigns and a concerted attempt to distribute reliable information about ICT careers and courses are crucial to dispel these perceptions.
Now what is government's response to the demand for e-skills?
As the global economy becomes increasingly ICT embedded, the competitiveness of the national economy in turn becomes more reliant on the availability of an e-skilled workforce. As noted by the 2005 World Summit on Information Society, "E-skills are essential in empowering individuals so that they can participate fully as citizens of the Information Society and take advantage of all the opportunities before them such as employment and wealth creation, for taking advantage of innovative education and learning strategies and for using new life-enhancing services, such as interaction with public authorities."
Furthermore, an e-skills development and training strategy in South Africa must occupy itself not only with those within the ICT industry, but also with deepening e-literacy of the consumers and intended users of the products designed and manufactured by the local ICT industry. Such a holistic approach has the potential to ignite a virtuous cycle, i.e. to stimulate new demands for customised software applications and content that can potentially boost the ICT industry with spin-offs for hardware design and manufacturing, as well as software and applications development.
This in turn will contribute to economic growth and job creation by focusing on the development and utilisation of information and communications technology (ICT) as a critical driver of development, in terms of infrastructure development, its contribution to manufacturing, and as a platform for transmission and processing of information.
It is within this context that the Meraka e-Skills Institute housed by the Ministry of Communications, aims to be a key role player and responsive change agent in the development of SA, within the globally evolving information and knowledge environment, by leading the creation of an appropriate e-skills development strategy, solutions, practises and the implementation thereof, to benefit the total population.
FET colleges play an increasingly important role in delivering the requisite skills needed in the emerging Information Society and Knowledge Economy. It is imperative for the Meraka e-Skills Institute to partner with such institutions in order to optimally utilise existing resources to achieve its goal of delivering employment-ready students to the South African economy.
Our engagement with FET colleges covers a wide spectrum of activities, in most cases in collaboration with other government departments and/or private sector companies. Projects include curriculum innovation initiatives in collaboration with the Department of Education and training projects in collaboration with ICT industry players.
It is best to conclude that the ICT Career Expo provides our young people and students with the opportunity to experience the world of ICTs and e-skills in a different way and to hear about and see for themselves the challenges, but also the opportunities, that face us as we negotiate the emerging Information Society and Knowledge Economy in our own country.
The students will also be encouraged to engage with the future and to think through the elements of the South Africa Vision 2025 which is under development, and would include a society in which the country’s natural wealth and its human resources are harnessed to ensure a growing economy which benefits all, and uses natural resources and modern technology, including ICT in a beneficial and sustainable manner.
I have initiated a number of policy interventions for the ICT industry that will facilitate and broaden participation for manufacturers, researchers and students for future requirements. This initiative will further stimulate growth in the ICT industry through partnerships.
The Ministry of Communications is fully supportive of educational programmes that seek to address the ICT skills shortage in South Africa. The time has come that we develop practical and sustained relationships between all stakeholders for the betterment of our students and the research community. I urge all entities present here today to give support by availing facilities for training and experienced labour force to ensure that skills development initiatives uptake is visible and has relevant impact on the society. I wish you all the best in your deliberations and I am looking forward to receiving your agreed plans at the end of this gathering.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Communications
29 September 2009
