SAP drives SA ICT skills through CIDA City Campus partnership

As one of the key sponsors of the CIDA (Community and Individual Development Association) city campus initiative to provide SA students with a more comprehensive understanding of IT systems in the modern business world based on hands-on experience with such systems, SAP Africa was pleased to present the first students from this innovative institution with their certificates at the certification ceremony held at the end of October 2005.

"We believe that CIDA city campus has been successful in its goal of bridging the gap between more theoretical, academic teachings of the more established SA tertiary education institutions and the real-world requirements of the industries into which these graduates are emerging," comments Andre Kruger, marketing operations manager at SAP Africa.

The students must first succeed in the first year of their academic degree, then undergo an assessment by the CIDA ICT Academy during their second academic year for admittance into the initiative. If accepted, this first year in the Academy adds intensive ICT grounding courses to the already pressing demands of the university training the academic degree.

In their final year, the students are allowed to choose from three specialist tracks in ICT at CIDA, with SAP training partner eGedi presenting the SAP Business Practices training on behalf of the multinational enterprise software vendor. This track provides the student with all the skills they need to enter the SA ICT industry as a valued SAP end user, including general business skills and specific SAP application training which a conventional academic degree would not provide.

Of the 113 students which made it to the final year in the ICT Academy, a total of 89 graduated the year and today 45% of this total have found employment in the local industry. SAP is also pleased to note that of the 35 students who chose the SAP specialist track, 35 passed the course successfully. "We have eGedi to thank for this 100% pass rate, and I believe we can expect to see such solid results continue with our training partner presenting the course at CIDA on our behalf," states Kruger.

Adds Max Magwaza, ICT Academy Manager at CIDA: "There is definitely a lot of merit in how we are training our students, we are conducting a survey of the industry at the moment and all the feedback so far is very positive praising us for providing training that is relevant to the industry and invaluable to the student entering the real working world."

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He continues: "Having a strong and committed team like eGedi just running with the training made it so much easier from our side, but I believe that in addition to this the fact that our students take this course on over and above their academic bachelors degrees means the quality and commitment of CIDA students is also exceptionally high. These students pretty much give up their social lives at 22 years old to come and receive the training we provide - they are a dedicated group who know precisely what they want and are willing to put exactly what is needed to achieve these goals."

Founding partners to the CIDA initiative T-Systems were quickly joined by SAP, Sun Microsystems and Cisco to drive the success of the city campus and show a solid pillar of social commitment through dedicated skills development in the country. The project was launched in February 2003 and this year's graduates the first solid indication of how successful CIDA is certain to be.

"In addition to donating funds, equipment, and the commitment of our training partner to the CIDA ICT Academy, SAP also hosted sessions at our offices where we introduced the students to our customers and business partners as a focussed recruitment drive. The students developed a CD containing a CV from each class member which was then made available to the industry players at drives such as this," says Kruger.

As more students like this initial 35 emerge from CIDA City Campus with a wealth of SAP, Sun and Cisco knowledge at their fingertips and hands-on exposure to the applications being used in the industry as well as industry players themselves, the SA ICT sector can leverage these skills and continue to grow from strength to strength in the future of transformation. Thanks to initiatives like CIDA and the support of industry heavyweights like SAP & T-Systems, the country could rapidly develop into a force to be reckoned with in the global ICT sector.