Fueling It’s Aim To Upskill Over 3,000 Developers By 2021, CiTi Group Receives USD 20.7 Mn Funding
The next three years of development are set to be some of the busiest for the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative (CiTi) group after they announced that they will be launching a three-year programme run through its CapaCiTi initiative. The mandate is to train 3000 developers by 2021 through its technology skills and job readiness programme.
To make this possible, the group has secured USD 20.7 million from National Treasury’s Jobs Fund and Telkom’s BCX along with others. Together the pair have contributed USD 14.5 million with the balance of USD 6.2 million coming from private investors previously associated with CiTi.
Since its launch in 2011, CiTi has been responsible for up-skilling over 1000 graduates through their development programme and the fact that they are aiming to triple this number, will come as a glad tiding to a population that has been long ravaged by youth unemployment. Claire Jowell, CiTi’s senior ecosystem manager has remarked that, “their aim is to have students that can deliver value immediately when they are hired,” she said.
Unemployment has been an inescapable reality for CiTi in the last 7 years of its existence and Ian Merrington, chief executive officer of CiTi has cited that the dire problem has been a cornerstone of their existence. “South Africa faces an enormous unemployment problem whilst at the same time the economy is being constrained from growing at its full potential due to a shortage of appropriate skills. This is further exacerbated by a rapid change to our old economic model as the new digital economy becomes pervasive”, said Ian merrington.
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Jowell also expressed that CapaCitTi has “achieved a 97% placement rate in 130 companies to date”. The programme will only continue to feed Java and Python skilled programmers into what is a growing IT sector in South Africa. They have already started accepting applications for its Cape town and Johannesburg programmes set to begin in July.
