The National Treasury’s Jobs Fund has partnered with CapaCiti Digital Career Accelerator (CapaCiTi) to bridge the digital divide and tackle youth unemployment in the country.
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According to the Chief Executive of CapaCiTi, Fiona Tabraham, they aim to enable inclusive growth of the digital economy by training young people to become future-fit and skilled employees with relevant digital skills matched to industry demand.
“We are dedicated to making an impact on the unemployment and skills crisis in South Africa whilst building a digital talent pipeline for the tech ecosystem, with the help of our valued partners that include ABSA, Old Mutual, Accenture and EOH Group, all of whom have committed to hiring graduates of the project,” explains Tabraham.
She adds that the Gauteng City Region Academy, Click Foundation, Naspers Labs, Younglings and the French Embassy have also partnered with CapaCiTi to offer innovative training and experiential learning programmes that focus on both technical and professional development.
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CapaCiTi’s candidates
Through its training and development programmes, CapaCiTi’s candidates receive blended training at its Tech Campuses via an online learning platform that promotes self-learning and group work as part of a holistic programme designed to develop digitally confident candidates.
Recently, CapaCiTi announced that it was awarded a competitive bid to train and empower 1 700 youth critical digital skills, with over the next two years to address the divide in South Africa’s growing digital economy.
According to the Jobs Fund, the project has been awarded over R54 million in grant funding and has raised a further commitment of R64 million, bringing the total commitment towards changing the future of unemployed youth to over R118 million.
“This exciting project targets the entire digital skills value chain, from facilitating the future digital generation in schools, to addressing the current skills gap in the digital transformation industry and developing skills for high-growth industries,” reported the Jobs Fund.
The digital economy is a key growth sector for Presidential employment and economic initiatives, and the bioeconomy is an important growth area for the 2030 National Development Plan.
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This is the second multi-year project award for CapaCiTi in partnership with the Jobs Fund, and it is expected that it will result in 1 500 job placements for young people.
Trained candidates
The first project successfully trained more than 2 300 young unemployed South Africans and placed more than 4 000 into job and internship opportunities.
The Head of Jobs Fund, Najwah Allie-Endries says:
“This is an example of an initiative that has considered both labour demand and supply by effectively responding to the needs of the market and the unemployed youth to promote sustainable job creation.”
Abigail Mphela of Tembisa in Gauteng is one of the young people who have benefited from the partnership.
She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2020 and applied to do a Cloud Computing Internship with Capaciti. She went on to further her Information Communication Technology (ICT) skills with CapaCiTi by doing a Software Development Internship.
“This programme enable me to work in groups. I got a clear understanding of the life cycle of developing a software and how Agile Methodology works,” she explains.
At CapaCiTi, Mphela was trained for work readiness which came along with other skills including communication, reporting, commercial awareness and presenting styles.
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“The support we got from facilitators and mentors was incredible. I did not have any technical background but I was able to keep up with other candidates. As a result, I was able to achieve certifications in Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Salesforce,” she mused.
She now works as a Business and Integration Arch Associate at Accenture and says this was made possible by the skills and knowledge she gained from CapaCiTi.
CapaCiTi accepts applications anytime as it is always on the look-out for new talent.
Written by More Matshediso for GCIS Vuk’uzenzele.
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