As youth month comes to an end, senior Vice President for Human Resources at NTT DATA, Kirsty Phaal draws a stagnant picture of digital literacy towards shaping the skills of young South Africans.
While the unemployment rate is spiking, and specifically affecting the youth; the world is fastly moving to a hyper technological environment. Hence, Phaal emphasised the significance of developing the digital skills of young people in order to deter a broadened digital divide, and prepare young people for the digital job market.
Phaal furthermore explained that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) centred education is imperative, however, the modern job market is a technology and digital incentive where cyber security, coding, IT and AI operators are of dire need.
“While the need for skills development for South African youth can’t be denied, technology is transforming at such a rapid pace that this development must be approached as one cog in a complex set of moving parts. Developing advanced digital capabilities should be the new end game which requires a completely different approach to teaching and learning.
“Our country currently faces an incredibly high youth unemployment rate of 46% among individuals aged 15-34. Of those employed, reports estimate that 52.3% of South African workers were employed in an occupation for which they did not have the correct qualification. With these numbers in mind there is a pressing case for us to teach the right skills instead of more skills. The question, however, becomes: what exactly are the right skills?
“A firm foundation of basic computer literacy as well as development of STEM skills to accomplish a range of tasks and solve problems in many fields is definitely a necessity, it’s a must. However, with estimations that tens of millions of future jobs globally will require far more advanced digital skills. We must start focusing on career capability development that creates a full life cycle of employment,” said Phaal.
Phaal highlighted that stakeholders in the private sector and the government must collaborate to develop technological skills of young people, where they will be employable and compete on a global scale with third-world countries.
“Skills-led learning in practical situations is the only way we are going to empower the next generation to handle the multi-faceted work landscape of the future. As much as we embrace digital transformation, we must embrace skills development transformation.
“The skills we are teaching youth today will look completely different to what we could be teaching in 18 months. This is why we must focus on rather entrenching core capabilities that can evolve as the demands of the role do.
“What we can, and should be doing with urgency, is closing the capabilities gap with initiatives, programmes, workshops and mentoring that provides hands-on experiences for engaged learners in real-world digital spaces,” concluded Phaal.
Saturday Star