Bridging the ICT skills gap in Africa is not only about technology; it's about tapping into the human capital and about how people at the top can provide others with opportunities to play in the future economies as they become more services- and knowledge-based.
So said Duncan Mitchell, senior vice-president for emerging theatre at Cisco, speaking during the Cisco Connect conference at Sun City on Monday.
Mitchell believes skills for the future, as opposed to skills from the past, are incredibly important. "We need to educate and equip people with the skill sets needed for jobs that will be available in the future."
Equipping people with future skill sets opens up a world of well-paid jobs, increases the middle class and economic prosperity, which results in gross domestic product (GDP) growth.
If GDP is grown by 1% per annum, it takes a generation to double the standard of living; and if GDP is consistently driven above 5% per annum, it takes about 15 years to double the standard of living.
"If I look at the 84 countries, three continents and 12 time zones I spend my life going around, there is an unusual situation in the west, where 50% of the population is around the age of 24 years old.
"This means there is hope for the future, because many of the people are young and have big aspirations for the future."
Citing findings from the World Economic Forum report, he said in just six years, there will be 95 million people equipped with the wrong skills for the available jobs, and 40 million too few skilled workers for the jobs.
According Vaughan Baptiste, Cisco line of business lead at Business Connexion, Africa is experiencing greater problems than the rest of the world when it comes to ICT skill shortage.
Brendan McAravey, country manager, Citrix SA, added the traditional models of solving the educational skills are too costly, and the continent needs to turn to the new types of learning models.
"We know the way to get to the disconnected is through mobile devices, and technology becomes critical in the way this market is reached."
According to Alfie Hamid, regional manager: corporate affairs, sub-Saharan Africa, Cisco SA, when the world moved into the industrial age, the first world made sure that, in addition to the investment in the technology, it also invested in the skill sets required to implement the technology.
He noted we now find ourselves in an information age, and the first world has also made certain it's invested in the skills required to put information in place.
"In order to catch up with the world, we need to ensure we are investing in those skill sets that are going to build that information super high, so we can become competitive with the rest of the world," he continued.
"I think this is where we need to work together to see how we can help each other to get those advanced skills required for the advanced technologies."
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