• Salesforce’s new talent strategy looks to touch all aspects of ICT education from schools to channel partners.
• Together with Deloitte, the firm will host boot camps teaching specialised skills in 2023.
• South African employers tend to look abroad for ICT skills as the cost and time investment of upskilling locals is too much.

As more local employers look abroad to hire ICT professionals, Salesforce has announced an initiative that bucks that trend.

At its Salesforce Live Cape event on Tuesday, the firm announced a new talent strategy that is built on five pillars, namely:

• Schools
• Universities and other tertiary education institutions
• The partner ecosystem
• Customers
• The South African population

Salesforce, together with Deloitte, will host a series of skills boot camps during the first quarter of 2023. These boot camps will aim to develop specialised digital skills. Details are thin on the ground as regards the content of these boot camps but we’re eager to learn more.

“We need to come together and do things differently if we want to tackle the skills gap. It is not sustainable for businesses to import skills from abroad,” senior talent programme manager at Salesforce South Africa, Ursula Fear said in a media statement.

“We need to come together and change the narrative around training and skills development in South Africa and this kind of collaboration is an important step in doing that,” added Fear.

The big question is whether this is enough.

As we reported last week, employers look abroad for ICT skills because of the monetary and time investment required to upskill recent graduates. Add ever-shrinking budgets to the mix and one starts to understand why employers would look to cheaper markets for their ICT needs.

There is also the matter of the digital divide. Not only does a lack of connectivity exclude individuals from participating in the digital economy, egovernment and other digital advances, but it also limits the education prospects of a person.

“We have reasonable connectivity to government sites, but we need to start focusing on addressing the last mile to villages and citizens; to close the last mile gap and ensure they have access to affordable high-speed broadband infrastructure and services, as well as the necessary skills to be able to effectively utilise this infrastructure. We need to have a clear and unifying strategy, plan and vision,” Lance Williams from the State IT Agency said in 2020.

This is however a double-edged sword as in order to improve access to connectivity, one needs those with ICT skills to develop and install the infrastructure.

Initiatives such as Salesforce’s are a start. However, if we want businesses to really look to locals for ICT positions, serious investments must be made in educating and upskilling individuals at all levels.