While South African women have made great strides over the years, they are still underrepresented in the local technology sector and alternative approaches to skills development are needed to drive tangible change. This includes partnerships between business and talent organisations to create innovative training programmes that not only fast-track their IT careers by blending theory with real-world experience, but also provides successful candidates with permanent employment upon completion.

A graduation ceremony that took place in Mowbray, Cape Town in late May marked the culmination of a year-long effort a Career Sprint aimed at equipping young people from surrounding communities with the hard and soft skills needed to ignite their careers in the Information Technology sector.

As we start celebrating Youth Month in South Africa, redAcademy, an experiential learning hub specialising in coding and technology skills, recently celebrated the successful graduation of its first cohort of Sprinters as Junior Software Developers. These talented individuals have achieved the prestigious Red Standard of Excellence after completing their 12-month Career Sprint, securing permanent employment contracts as promised by the Academy.

More and more South African organisations are turning to innovative approaches to teaching coding and technology skills in order to meet their requirement for software developers. As part of this transformation of tech training, there are 5 key qualities that will set youth apart and launch them into a successful software career. 

Digitisation and technology are widely regarded as having the potential to spur economic growth, with opportunities for youth in digital jobs a key consideration for their own career sprint. This is true, and spoken about often, but the truth is that unless all stakeholders act intentionally now, we’ll still be having this conversation in many years’ time instead of having made real progress.

As students and their parents look ahead to 2023, it is both an exciting and nerve-wracking time. Will you be able to study or work towards a qualification? What are the options? If you can, how much will it cost, and can you afford it? 

As we all know, the future is digital and software development will drive current and future innovations in the fourth industrial revolution. Our collective future, and securing employability, lies in IT. This is where it becomes exciting - there are dozens of industries and possibly tens of thousands of small, medium and large companies - especially those that are driven by a purpose to make people’s lives better - that will require strong IT candidates to fill crucial positions.

By Jessica Hawkey, Managing Director at redAcademy.