This is impacting business operations significantly.

But a skills-integration-as-a-service (SIaaS) model developed by redAcademy is a proven solution.

This model is having such commercial and operational success that it is being expanded into other highly skilled tech roles.

The customer-driven growth into the most in-demand skills is proof that this model is helping solve the country’s IT talent needs.

Only half of IT graduates are considered fully prepared for immediate employment in their field, resulting in technology skills gaps that are directly affecting the operations of 65 percent of businesses in South Africa.

Skills-integration-as-a-service (SIaaS) pioneer redAcademy is tackling these gloomy stats head-on with a revolutionary model that creates a collaborative ecosystem of tech talent, corporate partners, and their experiential learning hub – a fully customised and managed end-to-end service.

With a 96 percent placement of graduates into employment as testament to the success of the model, says Jessica Hawkey, redAcademy MD,

“Listening to the market and responding to its needs is crucial to our approach. To create a collaborative ecosystem, we consistently deliver value to our business clients, our young tech talent and constantly evaluate the effectiveness of redAcademy to fill the IT talent pipeline by serving both our candidates and clients.”

As a direct response to market needs, redAcademy is adding project management, cybersecurity, and AI developer programmes to their existing software development, software tester, test automation, and data science practitioner programmes.

“Importantly,” says Hawkey, “our rapid response to training for skills that are actually needed by businesses today, is because we do not train at arm’s length. We are fully connected, working inside our client businesses.”

redAcademy selects young South Africans to train for QCTO and MICT SETA-accreditation, but this is only part of the innovative approach. During months one to six, candidates – called Sprinters – study the theory in their chosen fields. For the full programme, Sprinters are embedded in the live business environment, operating within client companies. Months seven to 12 immerse candidates in real world experience where they deliver leading enterprise technology solutions while redAcademy oversees and hosts the full program in the live client space, and manages candidates’ delivery.

“In practical terms,” says Hawkey, “we’re helping to transform the way youth enter careers and the way businesses secure future talent to fill some of the most in-demand IT roles.

“Companies are aware of all the ways IT skills gaps impact their businesses, and they really do want to be part of an increased flow of talent through the IT pipeline, but they’ve got to focus on their core business. redAcademy is able to offer a point of immersion through our proven SIaaS model that takes care of every aspect of the partnership from QCTO qualifications admin to every aspect of integration into the client’s ecosystem. But we don’t stop there; we are contracted to deliver results to our corporate clients through our talented Sprinters.”

“Recruiting for critical roles incurs significant cost for companies and miss hires are expensive not only in monetary terms, but in disruption to business operations. Sprinters’ delivery of work into the client’s business is evidenced while trained by redAcademy inside the live environment. Once they enter full-time employment, they contribute to the team from their first day. The amount of time, money, energy and benefit this brings to the business is immense.”

The synergistic nature of the redAcademy model is solving a critical pain point that threatens business transformation, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025.

Hawkey says, “At the end of the year, our Sprinters are interviewed by the clients they’ve worked for under redAcademy’s management and guidance – keep in mind that at this point, rather than a report card, they’ve been assessed according to a set of KPIs and each client’s workplace standards. During the interview process, Sprinters have the confidence to speak directly to the benefit that they’ve already given to that company, and they also understand why they want to be a part of that organisation, which is known to them just as the candidate is known to the organisation.”

In the current South African context where businesses and youth face enormous challenges, the potential of the immersive approach is immense.

By bringing together talented youth and the strategic needs of business using a pioneering skills-integration-as-a-service approach, a powerful ecosystem is created that not only fills the IT talent pipeline but ignites South Africa’s digital revolution.

redAcademy’s unique SIaaS model can be easily adopted by businesses. And because the academy’s background is rooted in business and software, they understand the need to fully manage customisation, team management and administration throughout the full lifecycle of the program.

Onboarding is a mere two to three hours and the rest – program customisation, setup, placement interviews, management, and QCTO administration is taken care of by redAcademy. All clients need to do is assess the immediate benefit to their businesses.

Two recent statistics bump painfully against each other. Sixty-five percent of South African employers polled in the 2024 Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA) ICT Skills Survey, said skills gaps were having a moderate or high impact on their businesses.

Yet, despite the demand for IT professionals in the recruitment market, hiring activity declined by 5% in the fourth quarter of 2024, bringing the year-on-year decline to -19%.

It’s time to radically overhaul the talent pipeline that supplies South Africa and the continent with critical technology skills.

Prioritising skills and organisational fit over degrees

The World Economic Forum has stated that skills, not degrees, will shape the future of work but that the success of this approach will depend on how well companies are able to change their mindset.

A move from credentials only, to an “always-on, skills-based education and employment infrastructure with fitness-for-job and employment outcomes”.

Matching both hard and soft skills to the rapidly changing technology landscape is increasingly important. So important that a third of local businesses planning to expand their talent pool will remove degree requirements for roles within their companies.

Jessica Hawkey is the managing director of redAcademy that partners with corporates to fast-track carefully chosen South Africans into IT careers through a one-year, QCTO and MICT SETA-accredited programme.

The programme provides candidates with workplace experience and customised skills sets, ensuring they’re ready to contribute to future employers from day one.

The first six months are weighted toward theory and the next six give candidates real-world opportunities to engage with live development and deliver leading enterprise technology solutions for major clients. redAcademy remains the single point of management and accountability throughout the year’s full lifecycle.

She says,

“Our fully customised programme, based on ensuring candidates get real work experience, not only QCTO accredited training, is something a lot of stakeholders do not have in the market. We are seeing, in the long term, that developers without degrees are earning just as much as those with degrees.

“Companies are more inclined to pay only for the value an individual delivers. If people without degrees are earning the same, this speaks to the value of doing things differently; providing a different way for candidates to enter the market with skill sets and an organisational fit based on experience and not solely degrees.”

Real-world IT skills delivery

Hawkey believes accountability will play an important role in an industry-wide adoption of this approach.

“We contract for the delivery of work we produce for our clients’ businesses. We don’t get paid if our candidates do not deliver real-world results and real-world solutions to our corporate clients in the second six months of the one-year programme. This means our bread and butter is not solely training; it’s delivering work that produces real business benefits into our partner organisations.

“We’re seeing skills integration as a service (SIaaS) – the bedrock of our academy – truly come into its own. But companies need to do it with an organisation that knows how to deliver SIaaS. This means all the administration around QCTO qualifications, managing workplace knowledge, customised skill sets, and all of the experience and delivery into their IT teams. Companies just need to make a decision on a one-off spend redirect, to have this entire strategic element taken care of, and future proof their businesses.”

As a managed service, redAcademy manages every aspect of the integration during the year’s worth of training in the client’s ecosystem.

This means businesses can focus on delivering to their customers instead of spending time and money getting a new recruit to a point where they can start adding value.

Hawkey says, “Everything changes when a skilled tech professional starts day one of their employment fully immersed in live projects and the business culture.”

Traditional education struggling to keep up

That technology changes and moves at a rapid pace, is a given. But to get an idea of just how quickly the landscape is shifting: the integration of AI into at least one business function in global organisations surged from 55 percent in 2023 to 72 percent in 2024.

Career Junction Employment Insights 2024/Q4 notes a skills shift in the tech hiring landscape with a pivot away from new systems building, towards the integration and streamlining of technologies.

While software development is still the most recruited tech role, there has been an upsurge in AI, cloud computing and security, and data-driven roles with an increasing focus on infrastructure optimisation and data utilisation.

Organisations like redAcademy, in partnership with corporate customers, are using business-education models that allow them to respond quickly to rapid changes in the technology ecosystem, and adjust training accordingly, to match real-world needs.

Hawkey says,

“We’re in the process of adding project management, cybersecurity, and AI developer programmes to our existing offering of software development, software tester, test automation, and data science practitioner programmes. The new additions are the result of listening to market demands and expanding on our proven success in training our candidates on clients’ live software projects, immersing them in existing workflows and preferred technology stacks as they deliver their IT projects ahead of schedule and at the organisations’ expected quality levels.”

In light of the worsening IT skills gap crisis, the National Planning Commission’s report on South Africa’s Digital Readiness for the Fourth Industrial Revolution has recommended several key areas of focus that include: improving the quality of education to equip students with up-to-date skills, specifically soft skills; aligning technical and vocational education and training programmes with industry needs to provide technical skills, soft skills, and cognitive skills; and collaborating with industries to design and update qualifications and certifications that align with their needs.

Hawkey agrees:

“South Africans need opportunities to swap the campus for a meeting room, and exchange three years of traditional education for one year of experiential learning. Our young people need to earn [6.7 million children live in households where no adults earn income from employment]. So, we help them swap a qualification for a career, change theory into practical knowledge, and move into the job market without delay by creating working solutions and using the most relevant coding languages for real customers in our IT industry network.”

Jessica Hawkey, MD of the innovative and experiential learning hub redAcademy, says the biggest obstacle to closing the skills gap and getting more young people into IT careers is the perception that onboarding them burdens businesses by negatively impacting productivity and draining resources.

This understanding was reinforced by a recent survey conducted by redAcademy, that included some of the most recognisable brands in the country, spanning retail, financial services and more, where the number one concern remains the time, effort and loss of productivity associated with onboarding entry-level software developers.

“We knew from the outset that if we are to make any meaningful impact on the skills shortage we needed to find a solution to this problem. Since day one, and backed up by our recent survey, it became clear that graduates with classic qualifications require significant investment to get them up to par with ways of working and to be a cultural fit with the organisation they are entering. Businesses are concerned that this is not a quick process and that it eats into the capacity of senior resources who are not as productive as a result. This is why businesses are opting to hire more seasoned developers, even at a higher cost,” explains Hawkey.

Hawkey says that in order to address this, redAcademy has approached integrating skilled entry-level software developers into businesses as a managed service.

“SIaaS is designed to remove the number one obstacle to placing skilled young people in businesses. And so, as a managed service, redAcademy handles every step of the integration, significantly reducing the time and effort businesses need to invest themselves. We achieve this by customising year-long training inside the client’s live working environment. Six months of this is dedicated to their real-world software delivery. All of this is overseen within the redAcademy team,” she said.

The result is that businesses can focus on delivering value to their customers, while redAcademy’s senior software development professionals come in and manage the entire integration process, explains Hawkey.

“This changes everything because now, instead of having to invest time and money just to get a young person to be able to start adding value, the skilled developer starts day one of his or her employment fully immersed in the business culture and live projects, already integrated with the existing teams.”

Hawkey says that the managed service model, at scale,will make a dent in the IT skills shortage. “As a country we spend inordinate amounts of money outsourcing every year. Imagine that money was turned inwards – the impact on the local economy would be profound. In addition to this, circulating the same mid-level or senior developers increases costs and with heightened competition for talent, businesses invest in onboarding new staff only to lose the talent to another business with more budget. This is unsustainable as the skills gap is just getting bigger and unemployment is just getting worse. There isn’t an endless runway and as a country we need to do something before we get to the cliff.

“Make no mistake, the government and many other stakeholders understand the magnitude of the problem, with a host of important interventions. Now, businesses can enjoy SIaaS through their skills development spend as it is an accredited programme, meaning this comes at no additional cost to the IT department who gain access to custom-trained and experienced talent,” explains Hawkey.

“Adding SIaaS into the country’s toolkit provides a compelling business case to make a difference because companies can secure their future IT talent needs while simultaneously contributing positively to the country.”

In doing this, she hopes to play a part in shifting the scales in the highly imbalanced ecosystem of off-shoring work, essentially taking billions of rands out of the economy so desperately in need of growth impetus.

Change requires a shift in thinking, but she says this shift is already occurring.

Hawkey founded redAcademy to create a skilled pipeline of IT talent for businesses, trained specifically for unique needs within businesses.

The young people are work ready in a year because of a carefully curated programme of theory and live, on-the-job training in the partner businesses.

She explains that the model is about more than “just filling a role” but also about real, sustainable impact.

“Yes, businesses get the skills they need instead of skills development being a box-ticking exercise, but they also enjoy genuine cost savings through a vast reduction in the time it ordinarily takes to get new hires up to par on their roles, the company culture and the technology stack within the business. The whole idea is about boosting productivity and enabling businesses to deliver on their mandates with no disruption and unfilled junior roles.”

“Then, the impact on the graduates cannot be overstated. The model drives intergenerational impact because it enables young people from a diversity of backgrounds to uplift their families and because they enter an in-demand career, they have the ability to create a different economic future for their children with more opportunities. This is what wakes me up in the morning because this is addressing South Africa’s painful paradox: Thousands of unfilled jobs in the context of the highest youth unemployment rate in the world.” explains Hawkey.

Being a woman in a male-dominated technology industry, Hawkey uses her platform to inspire other young women to follow suit.

“I take my position seriously, and I hope to be a voice that gives more women the belief that they, too, can make an impact. Whenever redAcademy’s team speaks at events such as school activations, our youth bring a full representation of successful candidates in our academy, both young women and men, to ignite a passion for technology. The learners meet women and men from the same backgrounds as them who are now successfully employed as software engineers – that’s inspiring.”

Hawkey didn’t start her career in technology, having developed her leadership style in the world of finance. This is where she was first exposed to the off-shoring imbalance which she is passionate to help address.

“I spent a decade in the financial industry where I worked overseas and was immersed in other cultures. I came back to South Africa more determined than ever before to drive change. It was in my time as GM of operations in a finance business in South Africa where I began to understand the off-shoring imbalance, complete with its unsustainable costs – both to businesses and the country.

“Off-shoring excludes our own unemployed youth, reduces our tax base, and reduces the future customer base. It won’t happen overnight, but by methodically addressing the skills gap and bringing more of our youth into the formal economy, the R8,5bn currently offshored can be reduced, with the requisite economic knock-on effect for households that will have employed people, with good salaries, in them – possibly for the first time,” explains Hawkey.

She says that she has found herself needing to educate the business community on her new model for technology skills acquisition. “Businesses are used to doing things a certain way, but there is just not enough work ready skills, even amongst university graduates who have not yet been exposed to the professional world. So it requires a strong shift in thinking. This shift is happening and awareness is growing, especially as businesses learn that we have secured 100% full-time employment for our candidates when they leave the academy – this is validation for them of the viability of alternative talent-sourcing models.”

When asked why she chose to build an IT skills academy, Hawkey explains that technology is pervasive. “Software is involved in everything we do both personally and in business.

This has driven demand well out of reach of supply. The world is digitising at an unbelievable rate and so the demand will just keep growing. No doubt this is what is forcing businesses to look offshore.

And so, by demonstrating the viability of producing work-ready software developers much quicker than traditional channels, we aim to manage costs for businesses and keep rands in South Africa as opposed to offshore.”

Hawkey is under no illusions that to make a meaningful dent in the skills gap, the model needs scale.

“I plan to expand redAcademy into a minimum of five new locations annually. This will allow us to reach more youth, creating sustainable and scalable careers, while building momentum for South African businesses to host a local tech workforce in software development and data science at a globally competitive price.

“South Africa has successfully showcased what is possible in the contact centre industry, leveraging our time zone alignment to Europe. This model can also be employed in the highly complex field of technology and development.”

This gap is because there isn’t a real push towards aligning training programmes with the skills that companies require for specific roles.

Training candidates – or Sprinters as we call them – through a demand-led approach makes a valuable impact to both their lives as well as to the organisation, as immersive training means that they are familiar with a company’s technology stack and their office culture, making them immediately employable.

South Africa needs an agile, skilled, and adaptable workforce, as this is a critical objective for the private sector. This is especially true in an environment in which South Africa is facing growing economic challenges and rampant youth unemployment.

Jessica Hawkey, MD of redAcademy, details how to implement demand-led skills training in an IT department within a company, as well as its benefits.

Traditional training

Samelane points out traditional teaching measures still dominate how things are done. Yet, there is a distinctive shift towards immersive experiential learning, which prepares students for real-life challenges.

Such immersive training also caters for those students who learn better in real-life, or a live environment. It allows for better understanding of the subject matter, increased engagement, and motivation as well as better retention of the information, which is especially important in a fast-paced technology driven world.

As companies’ requirements change, so too does the way tech skills are taught. Not only is there a need to amend course curriculum to adjust for a specific necessity, but we must also move towards a more experiential training environment – giving students a hands-on experience in a live environment. This is a shift towards doing rather than hearing how things should be done.

What is it?

A 2022 report from the Department of Higher Education and Training, Skills Supply and Demand in South Africa, found that South Africa, overall, has a large imbalance between the demand for skills, and the supply.

This paper states that several workers are either underqualified or overqualified for their current jobs, and there are mismatches between a worker’s qualifications and the level of prowess required for their jobs.

Demand-led skills development is a key solution when it comes to ensuring that those who desperately need jobs can find them, while matching candidates with companies that seek specific skills in software development.

Taking this a step further is work-integrated learning, which makes it possible for companies that provide skills development in a live environment, like us, to present candidates to the company that already have the relevant experience – a process closer to an internal promotion.

Why it works

Demand-led skills training in a live environment benefits not only work seekers, but also companies because it resolves a specific skills gap, and puts the commercial objective front and centre for training.

It allows, in our experience, the employers the ability to focus on more strategic elements of the business and identify further areas in which they need to develop a pipeline of talent.

We have already seen evidence that immersive training also enables the development of softer skills, enabling those entering the workforce to engage with their peers and other colleagues in a way that fits in with the company’s culture. It also means that they will learn confidence to put their ideas forward, which adds a diversity of voices to the company, enabling them growth and creative ways to problem-solving.

Company benefits

Demand-led training not only aligns with company priorities in terms of business strategy and creating a pipeline of talent to help fulfil those plans in the IT department, but also saves money because it cuts down on the cost of hiring.

Hiring a new staff member can cost anywhere between three to four times what the employee’s annual salary would be, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

The bulk of the expense comes from the amount of time department leaders spend assisting HR in the hiring process.

Immersive training cuts down on this spend because the process is more akin to promoting from within the company rather than hiring from outside and having to assess skills and cultural fit. It reduces pressure on HR to recruit, reduces pressure on hiring managers to oversee, and reduces time to productivity of team members.

There are additional savings to be had, such as quicker onboarding of new talent, as well as them immediately being able to contribute to the current team.

The needle is finally shifting away from supporting training for training’s sake to the actual impact made, a shift that will be made through partnerships across all stakeholders including trusted partners who have been making an impact when it comes to livelihoods changed forever and not just the number of people trained.

This will stand South Africa in good stead as we seek to move with technological trends while also creating jobs and benefiting the economy.

As technology continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace and become infused across all aspects of the business, companies are increasingly under pressure to remain competitive by attracting the best tech talent available.

However with a shortage of IT skills and limited access to higher education, it is clear that alternative approaches to recruitment and talent development are required, and this includes a greater focus on skills-based hiring.

Promotions within an organisation are usually as a result of skills and experience rather than academic qualifications, so why not use these as the criteria right from the start?

Globally, large multinationals such as Accenture, General Motors, IBM and LinkedIn among others are placing importance on skills when hiring employees rather than focusing on traditional educational qualifications.

These organisations are looking for problem solvers with proven experience and a multi-disciplinary skill set rather than someone with just theoretical knowledge.

This approach is especially useful for filling modern, technology-based entry level roles in specific industries, such as in software development as an example.

By removing the requirement for mandatory higher degree qualifications from job advertisements, recruiters can tap into a wider range of candidates who possess relevant skills and experience. This not only increases the number of candidates available but also ensures that the best candidate is selected for the position.

In a country like South Africa, skills-based hiring can be an effective means of providing opportunities for young people without a university education. 

Of course, there is resistance as this is a shift that can upset the status quo; organisations have long relied on academic qualifications as a vetting measure and it can be hard to bring about change.

To be clear, we are not disregarding traditional degrees as they still have a vital role to play in certain professions. However, when looking at areas such as technology, traditional educational institutions have simply not been able to keep up with the rate of change – or produce the number of skilled graduates needed.

Businesses looking for tech talent the traditional way first need to look at how many graduates are on the market, then whether they are familiar with the organisation’s technology stack and finally whether there is a culture fit. There’s no wonder why there is a fierce war for scarce talent, while it is also clear that an alternative approach to skills development is needed if businesses are to meet their future requirements.

While there were not many alternatives in the past, organisations such as redAcademy are filling the gap by introducing a skills development and training programme, aimed at fast-tracking the careers of young South Africans in the IT industry. Rather than being bound by academic qualifications, the focus is on attitude – problem solvers who are quick to learn, dedicated, accountable, responsible and take pride in their work. 

The programme then equips these youth with software development training and theoretical knowledge before providing them with the practical, real-world experience of working alongside professional developers on projects for real clients, using their specific technology stacks – not unlike work integrated learning. Not only may opting for candidates based on their skills yield more favourable employment outcomes, compared to selecting based on their level of qualification and degrees, but they will be able to ‘hit the ground running’. 

Beyond simply providing organisations with entry-level talent, skills-based hiring can also help with building a developer resource pipeline as well as ensure that succession planning within organisations is successful. A talent partner can ensure that sourced candidates have the right hard and soft skills, familiarity with a particular organisation’s technology stack and way of working and can vet them based on acquired refined skills rather than general academics.

It’s important to note, however, that skills-based hiring cannot solely be the responsibility of the HR department.

Based on industry insights shared by Insaaf Daniels, Human Capital General Manager at redPanda Software, Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) and other members of the C-Suite must play an equally active role in driving the process forward.

They are responsible for determining the organisation’s strategic direction and ensuring that it has the resources it needs to achieve its objectives – and skills-based hiring will be a crucial component as it guarantees that businesses have the right people with the right abilities to deal with any issues that may arise.  

What is clear is that in order to remain competitive, companies in South Africa need to adopt new approaches to developing scarce talent while also investing in upskilling their current workforce and integrating learning into their corporate cultures. Slow-moving companies that operate with outdated paradigms will fall behind and risk losing their most valuable resource: Talent.

===

As 2023 begins in full swing, we can all be forgiven for feeling as though we have been on a seemingly endless roller coaster during the past year.

However, despite the surprises and shocks, one thing remained consistent throughout throughout 2022 and is predicted to be one of the most pressing challenges in 2023, for C-suites trying to keep up with a rapidly digitising world: there has been, and will continue to be, a chronic IT skills shortage, especially a shortage of work-ready software developers.

Of course, this is a tragedy because alongside the software skills shortage is a crippling unemployment rate, especially among young people, while from a business perspective, C-suites in general, and CTO ’s in particular, are being hamstrung in fulfilling their mandates of driving effective digital transformation in their organisations because of a dearth of talent.

A rethink around skills development will empower organisations to future proof their succession planning. Organisations can bring in young people – who are appropriately skilled, experienced and immediately employable – into the workforce quickly.

Let’s start at the beginning. Software development is often associated with the “IT industry”. The truth could not be more different.

The fourth industrial revolution has ensured that coding is not only relevant, but absolutely essential, in all industries, including financial services, telecoms, retail, healthcare, professional services, and more. Software developers are in the engine room driving digital transformation strategies.

That’s all good and well, except that when we zone in on individual businesses in all these sectors it won’t be unusual to find human resource teams unable to keep up with CTO demands of a sustainable talent pipeline. Of course, the simple reason is that there is a skills shortage made worse by the fact that in the endless rush to fill positions, many organisations don’t have the time or resources to train up young graduates to get them “work ready”, and then onboard and retain them.

The more complex reason is that in order to future proof digital strategies and succession planning, businesses need to invest in their technology leaders, and they must be sure that they are leading teams in an environment geared towards talent retention, growth and promotion.

CTO s, under pressure to deliver on their mandates, have a mountain to climb in sourcing scarce talent and then training them for the business requirements and technology stack, only to lose them to competitors.

Traditional degrees the world over are no longer the gold standard in the industry. Graduates, while able to code, enter the workforce “cold”.

In other words, they don’t possess the soft skills essential in a fast-paced business environment. Companies around the world – including S&P 500 companies – are leaning towards hiring experienced developers who don’t need to be trained to work within their technology stack. They are attracted to talent proficient in using coding languages relevant to their environments.

An intentional pivot, driven by the private sector, and one that we are incredibly passionate about, has the potential to make a dent in the unemployment rate while providing a solution for the pressing challenges faced by C-suites daily.

It is entirely possible to fast-track a young person’s career from matric to a live coding environment. Not just that, it is possible to ensure this young person is equipped with skills to work within existing technology stacks, and – importantly – ready to hit the ground running with a full understanding and appreciation of the professionalism required in the workplace.

By blending theory with real-world experience on live projects over the span of a single year, companies can build work-ready junior software developers already equipped with soft skills and already on board with the company culture.

Essentially, this builds a sustainable pipeline of software developers despite the skills-scarce environment. Through this innovative method of experiential learning, there is an opportunity for South Africa’s youth to work on your company’s own IT projects, simultaneously gaining experience on your tech stack and to deliver much needed solutions to address the gap in skills and resources.

By training young people on live projects, companies ensure the candidates build crucial experience on their existing workflows and technology stack.

Naturally, this reduces the burden on HR and minimises the time and money spent on recruitment without interrupting a steady flow of new talent into the business.

In other words, this new way of building a sustainable skills pipeline future proofs the business while contributing positively to our country’s socioeconomic transformation mission.

None of this is theoretical, nor a pipedream. South Africa’s software development skills future lies in fast-paced, one-year programmes that blend theory with real-world training to develop work-ready junior developers.

This solves pressing challenges for C-suites under pressure to roll out new technology while closing the experience gap for talented and young South Africans. Everyone has been fishing from the same pond – it’s time to build your own.