On 23 March in Pretoria, South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Communications (DoC) Roy Padayachie launched the National e-Skills Dialogue Initiative (Ne-SDI), a think-tank to address the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) skills shortage in the country.
The initiative will eventually be a unit or faculty of the soon-to-be launched Meraka e-Skills Institute. Ne-SDI will bring together role-players from academia, business, training institutions, government and civil society into a partnership with the Meraka e-Skills Institute. The collaboration will result in the development of frameworks for ICT curriculum planning, course development and planning for the institute to produce workplace-ready ICT graduates. The key role for the Ne-SDI will also be to ensure synergy between all research institutions in the country to avoid duplication of research efforts.
Said Deputy Minister Padayachie: “This initiative is the Department’s first step of a long-term effort to address the skills deficit in the ICT sector. During the International ICT advisors’ meeting with former President Mbeki, they noted the inability of the education system to produce the requisite skills for the industry. One of the critical constraints they said was the skills deficit in the ICT sector.
“We really want to harness the potential of ICTs and deal with producing the skills that the industry needs. This process is a step in the right direction and a consensus-building excise on how the sector can produce the desired ICT skills in response to the needs of the country.”
The Deputy Director General in the Department of Communications tasked with the operationalisation of the Meraka e-Skills Institute, Dr Harold Wesso, said South Africans live in the e-world and in order to deal with the complexities of such a world, e-skills are needed. “To deal with a curriculum that addresses the ICT skills challenges, we first need a dialogue to get a sense of what we are talking about and whether these graduates we will be producing meet industry expectations.
“In order to stay abreast of global developments in e-skills education and training, the Meraka e-Skills Institute needs to be informed by high quality research and innovative solutions development. The Ne-SDI is a first step in realising the objective of a fully operational Meraka e-Skills Institute by 2010.”
Through nurturing the Ne-SDI concept, the Meraka e-Skills Institute will differentiate itself from other institutions by providing innovative, leading expertise in teaching and R&D, and more importantly, workplace-ready graduates to the market-place
