IBM has started a programme at Stellenbosch University in South Africa aimed at giving graduates appropriate business and technology skills.
IBM says the collaboration is part of its move to cut the shortage of computer science skills in South Africa and on the entire continent thereby opening IBM’s new Software Centre of Excellence at Stellenbosch University.
The centre, expected to nurture technical skills into the students, will have technology equipment and training resources from IBM for the university’s postgraduate computer science students.
University relations for IBM Sean McLean said that in order to nurture sufficient highly skilled computer professionals to support IBM’s growing technological environment, the firm needs to match high-quality education with exposure to state-of-the-art and emerging technologies that matter to business.
This partnership comes in after a recent study found that firms on the continent were experiencing IT skills shortage in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.
According to a February Comptia report, 93 percent of CEO’s have for long been in need of digital-savvy staff to drive innovation in firms and reinvent their hardware or software products and services or develop them appropriately for the ever changing consumer market.
This smarter staff inadequacy is what is currently driving IBM to launch such facilities on the continent to build the much needed technology skills base for firms in Africa to draw from.
IBM will, with the help of Stellenbosch University, build strong software development skills among the engineers from the first-of-its-kind centre of excellence in South Africa at the postgraduate computer science laboratory.
Prof Ingrid Rewitzky, vice-dean and chair of the SU Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, says,“It is important for us to energise the classroom and that calls for integrating the latest technology into our curriculum in order to prepare students for high-value job opportunities”.
The Centre will help students develop software and the latest technological equipments will boost their software skills training.
The Centre will also have the support of competent computer science professionals from the University.
IBM also offers an ongoing training and development programme and regularly supports postgraduate courses in computer science.
“We expect the COE at Stellenbosch and others like it to be fully independent in the next five years,” McLean says.
