The employment scrap heap: a stark warning to the digitally illiterate

Transform is an online magazine and platform about digital technology. The latest edition is about talent development, with a focus on the #DigitalSkillsShortage.

In this issue:

Skilling up the next generation of tech talent in Zambia

Felix Mutati says his country has an urgent task: preparing the next generation of talent to compete in a digital workforce.

“You’re getting kids who come out of the education system digitally illiterate,” says Zambia’s Minister of Technology and Science.

“Last year, we carried out an assessment of our digital preparedness as an economy. We found that we are at just 54% preparedness.”

And that was just gaps in Zambia’s digital infrastructure. “When you looked at digital skills,” he said, “we were at 34%. That gives you an idea of the heavy lifting we’ve got to do.”

Mutati says that many people actually fear digital technology. “You can’t begin to train somebody who is totally reluctant to be trained,” he said. “And that is a bigger problem we have to solve, particularly when it comes to girls.”

“The lack of computers is a major challenge,” he goes on. “But more critical is the need for well-trained teachers who can impart digital skills at an early age.”

In response to this challenge, this year Zambia will re-train 3,500 teachers across the country, equipping them with the tools they need to impart skills to children. It will also connect all the secondary schools to the internet. 

Read the entire interview here.

Cultivating talent in all its dimensions

David Atchoarena knows a thing or two about fostering talent. He is Executive Director of the WHO Academy (the learning center of the World Health Organization), and former head of UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning, the part of the UN that concentrates on adult learning, continuing education, literacy, and non-formal basic education.

“Young talents are, of course, essential,” he notes. “But talents can be found at all ages.”

For that reason, it's important to “look at the inter-generational dimension of learning, and how you pass knowledge, skills, and culture from the older workers to the new and younger workers, and how you generate, sustain and cultivate young talents, capitalizing on the experience and knowledge of the older generation, and therefore developing from the young age the capacity to learn throughout life.”

He goes on, “It's the capacity to be an independent learner. The skills in terms of developing your own autonomy as a learner are very important.”

You can watch the whole interview here. 

Sometimes, your superpower is the refusal to give up

Doreen Mbhalati-Mashele couldn’t get online, and that made her angry. Job-hunting without the internet is no fun, and she lived in a rural part of South Africa where connectivity was patchy at best.

That led her to explore a career in telecoms. As an entrepreneur, she had to work nights, then start her side hustle at 7:00am. Some days, she slept in her car to make sure her employees didn’t slack off.

Today, Doreen is CEO of Derliz Investments, a 500-employee company that is one of Huawei’s biggest subcontractors.

“I want to see myself as a part of changing South Africa,” she says, “from the old, traditional ways to more advanced ones.”

Read Doreen’s story here.

The founder of two computer programming schools in Portugal says “assembly-line schooling” no longer works.

Professor Pedro Santa-Clara says education today is stuck in an outdated model. “Teach the same thing to everybody, memorizing for exams, in an assembly-line approach,” he says.

This system has succeeded in achieving high rates of education, Santa-Clara notes. “But in many countries we’ve shut down the two mechanisms that create quality and value in any industry: competition and innovation.”

To bring education into the 21st century, Santa-Clara says, we need to overhaul it from the ground up. “We need to develop skills in problem-solving, creativity, communication, and cooperation, as well as technological skills.”

Also important: learning to learn. “We have an opportunity to change education and have broader human skills, a diversity of knowledge, and use technology rather than stick with one-size-fits-all.”

Click here to read the complete interview.  

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