SAP educates to employ
Organisations work together in partnership to produce a generation of employed tech developers.
The System Analysis Program (SAP) developers based in Woodmead partnered with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to host an event celebrating their Educate to Employ initiative on November 22.
Nearly 50 of the Educate to Employ participants were joined by a full auditorium in hearing the wisdom of the programme’s ambassador Nonkululeko Mokoena.
“Africa is well-positioned to provide the tech-skills needed to drive the global economy,” Mokoena said. “The big question remains: ‘What are organisations doing to make themselves accessible to this pool of talent that we have here’?”
This question was answered by SAP managing director Kholiwe Makhohliso.
“We appreciate and acknowledge the effort that they have made in this programme,” Makhohliso said.
On stressing the importance of initiatives like Educate to Employ, Makhohliso indicated that she had just returned from a strategy session where she was among those made aware of the unemployment rate in South Africa being at 31.9%.
“We are all acutely aware of the overall unemployment rate in South Africa,” said Makhohliso. “Yesterday, I also had the privilege [of] attending a strategy session where we had the presence of the statistician general, who painted a really grim picture of unemployment in South Africa.”
The event was characterised by a panel discussion titled ‘Rise Together for Quality Education and Decent Jobs’, followed up by a media briefing session.
The central theme was working together towards generating employment opportunities for youth in line with linking skills development with employment opportunities. This panel was presided over by SAP Head of CSR and global vice president Alexandra van der Ploeg.
The panel consisted of representatives from the key stakeholders in partnership: SAP managing director Kholiwe Makhohlisa, head of communication at National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) Lwazi Khoza, UNICEF representative Christine Muhigana, and Umuzi co-founder Andrew Levy.
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