SAP Africa’s successful Skills for Africa job creation initiative has launched in South Africa, promising jobs to the all trainees that successfully complete the intensive 3-month course.

“SAP Africa is an integral part of SAP Africa’s commitment to train 10 000 ICT consultants across the continent by 2020,” said SAP Africa MD Brett Parker.

Out of 1 000 applicants, 75 South African graduates from across the country, of which about half are young women, have been selected for the first local SAP Skills for Africa class.

On successful completing of their studies, each student will go on to internships with SAP partners and customers involved in the initiative.

“Skills for Africa is not an education initiative – it is a job creation and career building initiative,” said SAP Africa COO Mehmood Kahn.

“It’s an intensive training schedule, but it has a 98% placement rate. Every student that passes is guaranteed an internship with one of our partners.”

The initiative was launched in Morocco and Kenya, where there was 100% pass rate and every student was subsequently employed.

“This is the outcome that we are expecting in South Africa,” said Kahn.

This Africa-wide program was started in Kenya and Morocco “because of the absolute lack of skills in those countries,” he added.

SAP Africa believes that the launch of Skills for Africa is well-timed now for South Africa because of local employment drives and new SAP technologies launching in South Africa.

“We have had bits and pieces of this training in South Africa previously, but we have now pulled it together into one course,” Parker said.

“It is now a really sustainable program that creates jobs and changes the lives of the trainees. We are seeing real quality come through the system.”

The SAP Skills for Africa Scholarship Program training takes place over a period of ten weeks, focusing on internationally recognised IT and business skills through both classroom and e-learning that is fully sponsored by SAP.

The program represents a collaboration between SAP Africa and local SAP customers and partners, including:

  • Accenture
  • ATOS
  • BMW
  • Consnet
  • T-Systems
  • Tata Consulting Services
  • Britehouse
  • Gauteng Provincial Government
  • MICT SETA
  • Multichoice