Johannesburg, 21 Feb 2024
With the impact of youth unemployment being particularly severe in South Africa, with no less than 62.1% of the country’s youth with no foreseeable prospects, #WiproAfrica, along with CAPACITI, has constructed and launched an innovative programme that affords technical skills development, coupled with the environmental know-how to apply such skills in work environments within which we aim for them to be employed.
As an industry leader and employer: “Wipro takes very seriously our role to contribute towards growth on the African continent; central to this is enabling our youth to partake in the economy of today and the future,” says Warren Zambelli, Wipro Africa Managing Director.
As an NPO with proven merit as an implementation partner in both private and public sectors over the past 20 years, as well as their well-established relationships with ambitious impact funders, CAPACITI is Wipro’s partner of choice to deliver our Partner Graduate Academy. “Our approach to partnering is unique and distinctive, and CAPACITI has proven to share our values and are willing to do things differently to achieve better outcomes,” says Zambelli.
Additionally, “we’ve been deliberate in identifying the key skills that are most pertinent to our clients and have collaborated to ensure this newly generated talent has high potential for direct employment through the programme and are empowered to succeed in a fast-evolving ICT industry”. The range of specialised technical courses have been designed to provide candidates with certified training and professional development, directly streaming them into specific career pathways for disciplines such as cyber security, DevOps, data and analytics, etc. This will equip them with a foundational base upon which their professional readiness will be established.
The Partner Graduate Academy is currently in a ramp-up phase, with an initial intake of 60 high-potential youth enrolled after a competitive selection process and is set to increase to 90 every six months, to produce 180 active practitioners annually in Johannesburg alone. This has also been made possible through the financial support of the social impact arm of Wipro, Wipro Cares. Its regional leader, Sara Kalvachova, had the following sentiments to share on their involvement: "This programme manifests the essence of Wipro Cares’ founding mission to empower young people with relevant tech, soft skills and environmental readiness interventions. Enabling them to join the competitive job market, become immediate and active contributors to the world of work, and in turn, improve the lives of their families and communities at large.”
When asked about the exciting partnership with Wipro, CEO of CAPACITI Fiona Tabraham shared: “CAPACITI’s goal is to empower marginalised South Africans with skills that make the digital economy more inclusive. Creating opportunities for unemployed youth to access sustainable livelihoods, and creating strong tech talent pipelines, cannot be done alone. We celebrate our partnerships with clients such as Wipro, who understand the need for, and importance of, impact sourcing in our country.”
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