City equips youth with coding and digital skills
06 February 2020
The City of Cape Town has embarked on a skills development project that equips young people with the required skills for today’s job market. Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Management, Alderman Grant Twigg awarded Coding and Digital Skills Certificates to 10 jobless youth on the Cape Flats.
The selected unemployed young people completed a five week upskilling course. The objective of which was to equip them with necessary skills to enhance their chances of finding a job and becoming entrepreneurs in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. In addition, a basic project management course was also included as part of the training by the service provider.
The group was from the areas of Philippi, Lavender Hill, Manenberg, Belhar and Lansdowne. The certification ceremony was held last Thursday (30 January) at the University of the Western Cape.
Coding is the basic act of writing in a programming language in a script that a computer can understand. This includes everything from the creation of websites and mobile applications to software development.
Digital skills can be defined as a range of abilities to use electronic devices, communications applications and networks to access and manage information.
‘ICT is not only one of the fastest growing industries, directly creating millions of jobs but it is also an important enabler of innovation and development,’ said Alderman Twigg.
Some of the expected skills to be learned from the course were the honing of problem-solving ability, entrepreneurship, working independently, creativity, algorithmic, sequential and computational thinking skills. The 10 candidates achieved a pass rate exceeding 90 percent and five of them have already started their own business.
Alderman Twigg said that the City’s Urban Management Directorate has various economic development programmes that aim to facilitate training, skills development and entrepreneurship.
‘As a City, we want to address the skills demand in the sector. As the world is shifting into the digital way of doing things the coding and digital skills are going to be in high demand. We need to adapt to the revolution, be equipped and prepare our youth with the necessary skills to survive the trends,’ said Alderman Twigg.
Youth are the lifeblood of the city, but still face many socio-economic issues that hamper their development and keep them in the vulnerable group in our society.
‘The City, along with other spheres of government, has a number of programmes in place to advance youth development and help overcome the challenges such as unemployment, violence, crime and substance abuse,’ added Alderman Twigg.
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Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
