{"id":29943,"date":"2019-11-06T10:53:15","date_gmt":"2019-11-06T10:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=29943"},"modified":"2019-11-08T11:23:57","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T11:23:57","slug":"sap-expert-looks-at-the-ict-skills-priorities-for-companies-operating-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2019\/11\/06\/sap-expert-looks-at-the-ict-skills-priorities-for-companies-operating-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"SAP expert looks at the ICT skills priorities for companies operating in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Johann Pretorius, Director Training, SAP Training and Development Institute, analyses what the ICT skills priorities are for companies operating in South Africa. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Africa has the youngest population in the world, and it\u2019s growing fast. By 2055, the continent\u2019s youth population (aged 15-24), is expected to be more than 450 million according to UNDP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first \u2018always\nconnected\u2019 generation, Millennials, is the best-educated in history, which provides\norganisations of all kinds with an immense pool of young talents. However,\ntoday\u2019s youth is still affected by high unemployment rates. Youth unemployment\nin South Africa has continued to increase, reaching a shocking 52.9% according to World Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, nearly two-thirds of global organisations\nadmit to lacking the digital skills they need to succeed. By next year, more than 40 million high-skilled workers will be\nneeded globally. Organisations\nacross Africa are making good progress with preparing for the Fourth Industrial\nRevolution, but access to relevant and work-ready digital skills remain a\nchallenge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it is\nclear that there is a skills gap and we have insights on the current skill\npriorities, in this everchanging Digital Era required skillsets keep changing\nat a fast pace and in-demand skills are not built overnight. South Africa\u2019s\ngrowing youth population poses great opportunities for public and private\nsector organizations to successfully tackle current and potential future skills\ngaps \u2013 if they join hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the key challenges regarding the digital skills gap is that the responsibility of building the right skills is not shared between various stakeholders. Enabling todays and tomorrows youth, our future leaders, cannot be achieved by educational institutions only. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Johann Pretorius, Director Training, SAP Training and Development Institute<\/strong> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Skill development\nis a joint responsibility. Only if individuals, public, private and academic\norganisations work together and create a constant dialogue, we can close the current\nand future skills gap. On the\nfoundation of public-private-academic partnerships SAP has created initiatives\nto drive digital skills build and create a quadruple win – local youth find a\njob, SAP customers and partners find brilliant talent, SAP enhances its\necosystem, and the economies in these countries benefit in their fight against\nyouth unemployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SAP Skills for Africa is SAP Africa\u2019s\nskills development and job creation initiative to tackle these pressing issues\nof our times. SAP Skills\nfor Africa is aimed at developing ICT skills among African youth as part of\nSAP\u2019s global commitment to promoting education and entrepreneurship, in line\nwith SAP\u2019s support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Two programmes,\nthe SAP Dual Study Program (DSP) and the SAP Young Professional Program (YPP)\nare offered under the auspices of the Skills for Africa initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SAP Skills for Africa gives SAP\u2019s public\nand private sector partners access to work-ready talent that can drive Digital Transformation\nwithin their organisations. At the same time, this initiative supports young unemployed\nor underemployed talents to kickstart their careers and find meaningful work.\nThe training is just the start, the on-the-job enablement at partnering organizations\nis crucial to develop program graduates into the leaders of the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To date, more\nthan 385 unemployed or underemployed South African youth \u2013 and more than 990\nacross Africa – have graduated from the SAP Young Professional Program as SAP\nAssociate Consultants. Through SAP\u2019s close partnership with its customers and\nindustry partners, over 99% of all program graduates secure work placement upon\ngraduation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johann Pretorius, Director Training, SAP Training and Development Institute, analyses what the ICT skills priorities are for companies operating in South Africa. Africa has the youngest population in the world, and it\u2019s growing fast. By 2055, the continent\u2019s youth population (aged 15-24), is expected to be more than 450 million according to UNDP. The first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":29944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4950,843,6,19,9059,13,262],"tags":[385,1007,389,1002,157,11612,188,310,11617,11615,11614,11613,11616,2340,453,6275,2373],"class_list":["post-29943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-editors-choice","category-insights","category-regional-news","category-south-africa","category-top-stories","category-used","tag-africa","tag-digital-era","tag-digital-transformation","tag-fourth-industrial-revolution","tag-ict","tag-johann-pretorius","tag-sap","tag-sap-africa","tag-sap-associate-consultants","tag-sap-dual-study-program","tag-sap-skills-for-africa","tag-sap-training-and-development-institute","tag-sap-young-professional-program","tag-skills-for-africa","tag-south-africa","tag-un-sustainable-development-goals","tag-world-bank"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29943"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30018,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29943\/revisions\/30018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}