City hosts graduation ceremony for SAP Skills for Africa students

4 October 2016

The partners in the SAP Skills for Africa Programme all share the same vision of providing sustainable jobs to alleviate the unemployment crisis, not just locally in the province and the country but beyond the borders across Africa. After 12 gruelling weeks of training in digital and business soft skills, today’s graduates are equipped with practical digital skills and, most importantly, full-time employment.

"We are proud to be associated with SAP South Africa’s job creation initiative. One of the biggest benefits of this training is that it caters for a business need that makes the graduates immediately employable.

Such partnerships are crucial to successfully train our future generation in much-needed scarce skills. The graduates are well prepared to face the challenges in their careers and will be able to adapt to the constantly shifting demands of an ever-changing digital world," Xanthea LimbergCity Mayoral Committee Member: Corporate Services and Compliance

In addition to the skills acquired, the training will help this group of young people to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively. These are all important attributes that will be of benefit to them in the corporate world as well as in their personal lives.

"This is an exciting partnership for all involved. Governments alone are unable to empower the future generation with the required skills. Such partnerships therefore are critical to ensure that real empowerment and skills transfer does take place, especially in scarce skills," Xanthea LimbergCity Mayoral Committee Member: Corporate Services and Compliance

This initiative is the first of several proposed investments in the years to come, to be undertaken jointly between the City and SAP South Africa.

"We need to lower our dependency on external SAP consultants and such a partnership allows us to grow our internal skills pipeline. Cape Town, like cities around the world, is increasing in size and complexity, therefore technology is the enabler that will allow us to become smarter and run more efficiently." Xanthea LimbergCity Mayoral Committee Member: Corporate Services and Compliance

It is on this premise that additional ancillary SAP function modules will potentially be included for future graduates.

All the training culminated in both a SAP Academy accreditation and an internationally recognised Associate SAP Consultant certification. The programme was fully sponsored with no cost to the students.

In response to specific requests from the SAP customers involved, for the first time the students were introduced to the SAP Industry Solutions: Retail and Utilities as part of their training.

In addition to the training in this specific software methodology, the students will be able to act as trainers for Africa Code Week taking place later this month. This will be the largest literacy coding event on the African continent. Launched last year with over 89 000 youngsters across 17 African countries who were trained in coding, this year’s series of events will see more than 150 000 youth across 30 African countries being targeted.

The City of Cape Town has been a SAP partner since 2003. Over the years the City has been internationally recognised for its visionary use of this technology in delivering basic services, connecting residents, and developing smart solutions for effective project and programme management. Today, the City’s SAP system is considered to be one of the largest and most successful ERP systems on a global scale implemented in a local government.

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