SA youth increasingly enticed by offshore ICT jobs

The increasing number of skilled South African youth finding employment opportunities offshore is exacerbating SA’s digital skills crisis.

This was the sentiment shared by panellists during a roundtable discussion held yesterday at the launch of the MTN Skills Academy and job placement hub in Johannesburg.

The discussion, moderated by radio host Gugulethu Mfuphi, was centred on the importance of digital skills training initiatives to plug SA’s chronic ICT skills gap and fuel job creation.

The panellists were Nompilo Morafo, MTN Group chief sustainability and corporate affairs officer; Richard Moyo, project manager at Datacomb Development Hub; and Waseem Carrim, CEO of the National Youth Development Agency.

According to the panellists, there are concerted efforts to narrow the ICT skills gap and address youth unemployment through private-public partnerships. However, they noted, there is a rising challenge due to the increasing number of skilled youth taking up employment opportunities with global tech firms.

This is leading to South African companies competing against the rest of the world for tech talent – a predicament that is worsening the ICT skills dearth.

“Many people are getting skilled to leave the country. This is something that we have observed through recruitment and it is becoming a struggle to get the right skills into organisations,” noted Morafo.

“I may not have the statistics, but if you read about it, young people are leaving the continent – they are leaving our country because once they get educated and they get skills from companies such as MTN, then all of a sudden, they can work for a global company like Microsoft.

“We want our young people to stay on the continent and develop the countries where they come from. The future is now and South Africa will be able to meet this huge skills requirement in the long-term if people stay in the country and realise it’s possible to fulfil their careers in STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] here at home and still be able to flourish.”

Mfuphi referenced a McKinsey and Company study that estimates the inevitable advance of digitisation, machine learning and automation could displace as many as 3.3 million existing jobs in SA by 2030 – mostly in the retail and manufacturing sectors.

“But, according to McKinsey, if we act quickly enough, we could actually create 4.5 million new jobs through digital skills by 2030 – so this is more than what we would have potentially lost.

“This speaks to the critical arm of socio-economic development and skills development, which helps create beyond just a job to keep for six months, but it creates a multiplier effect on communities and the overall societal development of South Africa,” she commented.

A snap survey conducted by the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa last year found that local IT employees are increasingly looking for employment opportunities overseas – further threatening the available skills base.

Carrim pointed out that many global business services see SA as the number one destination for call centre talent and data processing centres, hiring many young locals.

While SA’s youth unemployment level remains a concern, the age group between 25 to 34 years has seen a 4% improvement, with the unemployment rate now sitting at 39.8%.

This is due to skills development initiatives such as the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, a multi-sector action plan/programme directed at addressing SA’s chronic youth unemployment, Carrim noted.

“Yes, we are losing important skills to Europe and Australia, but I think we forget that skills not utilised are lost. Upskilling youth is one thing, but backing these programmes with quality employment is critical.

“For the first time since I've been in this sector, we have youth unemployment between the ages of 25 to 34 falling below 40%. If you take these figures and project them into the future, it tells us that by 2030, the unemployment rate could be below 20%, assuming SA would have gained some level of economic growth during this period.”

According to Carrim, unlike traditional educational institutions, digital skills academies are playing a crucial role in creating a pipeline for critical ICT skills by directly fuelling industries where there is high demand for such skills.

“In SA, our approach to skills development has always had a heavy focus on training for an accreditation, or a certification, with less of a focus on training for the direct skills demand. Everything in the country has to be demand-focused.

“However, it is expected that the structural reforms will start to bear fruit in the next couple of years and see this gap narrow.”

Providing a different perspective, Moyo noted the issue of young South Africans seeking offshore opportunities should not be perceived in a negative light, as this exposes them to quality experience and rare opportunities they would otherwise not have had on the continent.

“If Microsoft wants to hire you abroad, by all means, go and gain experience, but don’t forget to bring those dollars back home. Yes, we are losing skills, but that’s why we are here and talking about up-skilling.

“The rest of us will stay behind and we will generate more skills. I don’t think this is entirely a bad thing because come economies in Africa are driven by the diaspora, where people go work overseas and send money back home,” stated Moyo.