Youth unemployment in South Africa sits at 60.9% among South Africans aged 15-24, with overall unemployment now sitting at 32.7%.(1) Against this backdrop, the country’s formal qualification ecosystem remains firmly anchored in a five-year review cycle while the AI skills crisis accelerates around it. More than 90% of global enterprises are expected, says IDC, to face critical skills shortages this year, with an anticipated cost to company of $5.5 trillion.(2) This price tag is felt in product delays, reduced competitive advantage and lost business.
A recent study by Randstad Digital found that nearly three-quarters of professionals believe they need to upgrade their skills to remain relevant in the AI environment, with 52% looking for training solutions outside of the business because internal skills development systems are not keeping up.(3)
As Ursula Fear, Senior Talent Programme Manager at Salesforce, said at the Agentforce World Tour 2026 event hosted in Johannesburg, there is a mismatch between the curriculum and reality. “Technology is advancing at such a significant pace, it is the equivalent of a curriculum change every four months,” she explains. “At the current rate of change, a first-year student in a five-year degree is already behind before they finish their first semester.”
Salesforce is not the only company releasing new solutions and platform versions every four or so months, but South Africa is one of many countries still stuck in the yearly qualification life cycle. Few countries have adapted their speed of qualification to the speed of innovation. India’s National Skills Qualification Framework is one that has moved to meet demand, with National Occupational Standards reviewed on a two-to-three-year basis.(4) It’s a smart move and one that can fundamentally change the employment and skills narrative in the region. Think about the volumes of people required to work in AI and how the need for AI fluency has grown. The PwC 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer analysed nearly 1 billion job descriptions to pull out data around how AI is impacting factors like roles, responsibilities, wages and more. The study found that the skills "for AI-exposed jobs are changing 66% faster than for other jobs" and that people who have AI skills are able to "command a 56% wage premium”.(5)
“For talent and industry alike, the answer isn’t to wait for the formal system to develop skills or expand expertise but to rather layer micro-credentials directly onto baseline tertiary qualifications,” says Fear. “This produces graduates with both the degree and the current, verifiable technical skills employers are hiring for.”
Salesforce’s free online learning platform, Trailhead, is the infrastructure she’s using to achieve this goal, building the talent force the company needs for its AI future. The platform is open to anyone with an internet connection and covers everything from entry-level AI awareness to deep technical implementation skill. There are thousands of alumni across Africa that have been impacted through Salesforce’s Global Workforce Development Partners (GWDPs), with various learning journeys completed through ALX and Africa community group called Africa Ohana. It allows companies to pair their AI investment with structured workforce capability that can transform productivity and returns.
Scaling the platform and its potential is the next challenge. This means, in South Africa, heading into places that the technology sector has traditionally overlooked.
“We established the Dundee Digital Skills Hub in a small farming town in KwaZulu-Natal and found a pool of extraordinary talent,” says Fear. “Marine biologists, teachers, qualified people who had gone to the cities to look for work and come home when they’d failed to find it. There is a wealth of qualified people in these communities who have no pathway into the economy.”
Dundee is one of two rural interventions run by Salesforce in the Kwa-Zulu Natal region and Fear’s broader vision is to create a network of digital hubs in communities across the continent, drawing on the talent the sector has missed. It means that the company isn’t competing for talent in a small, concentrated pool in Johannesburg and Cape Town. However, this is not the only direction Fear wants to take Salesforce’s recruitment and skills development.
“One of my dreams is a night school for already employed people, who need to expand their knowledge with new skills and create a different kind of employability,” she says. “The structure exists, but we need more urgency to drive both people and companies to invest in this future.”
The urgency is coming from AI, particularly as companies continue to invest in its potential. Salesforce’s Agentforce platform is built on the premise that AI absorbs the repetitive and procedural, releasing people to focus on the cognitive work that demands judgment and synthesis. Fear’s recommendation to employers is genuine and direct: spend five to 10 hours a week on skills development as a standard workflow to find the sweet spot between genuine human and agent collaboration.
“This sweet spot doesn’t arrive automatically, you have to build towards it deliberately through continuous learning,” she says.
(1) https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=19526
(3) https://www.randstad.com/press/2026/ai-boosting-productivity-businesses-are-missing-payoff/
(4) https://nsdcindia.org/national-occupational-standards-and-model-curriculum
(5) https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/ai/ai-jobs-barometer.html
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