City highlights successful internship programme at its Digital Transformation Summit

05 June 2025

Today, 5 June 2025, the City hosted its first Digital Transformation Summit at the Cape Town Civic Centre. The summit highlighted the milestones the City’s Information Services and Technology (IS&T) department has achieved over the last five years since Council approved the Digital Transformation Strategy. One of them being the Digital Internship Programme that was launched in 2023. Read more below:

The morning consisted of noteworthy panel discussions amongst the City’s top tech and data experts. The topics ranged from the cyber threats that government and businesses face on a daily basis, on how important data cleansing is for both the municipality and its residents, as maintaining up-to-date data records will ensure that the City is more responsive to the needs of citizens by making better data-driven decisions.

The summit also featured interesting guest speakers, Mr Jamie Marais, an extreme endurance athlete who spoke on resilience and endurance, as well as Ms Pragashani Reddy, Executive Director of Digital Transformation from ABSA who addressed lessons from ABSA, cybersecurity and bridging the digital divide.

The young minds who are part of this exciting journey through the City’s digital internship programme, were also present at the summit. This internship programme was established in 2023 and attracted many students from Western Cape universities who were completing their studies in Computer Science, Science, Engineering, Industrial Psychology and even Astro Physics degrees.

The first intake of 13 interns gained experience in project administration and management, change management and the technical IS&T work. The City announced that 11 of those interns have secured permanent posts this year, which is a testament to the City being able to retain top talent at the municipality.

‘Today we introduced seven new interns who form part of our 2025 digital internship programme intake. These ambitious students will be placed in various roles within IS&T, across Enterprise Architecture, Emerging Tech, Digital Transformation and SmartCape, and I know they will experience huge growth working with some of the most talented minds in this field. We wish them all the best as they embrace this opportunity to learn and grow in this exciting digital space,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Corporate Services, Alderman Theresa Uys.

The new graduate interns who were introduced today stem from communities right across Cape Town such as Philippi; Parklands; Ottery; Khayelitsha and Heathfield. They were appointed in May 2025 and are completing degrees in Commerce and General Accounting, Computer Science and Business Management.

‘The discussions this morning confirmed our pragmatic approach to ensuring that our digital transformation journey prepares us to become future-ready and future-fit from a technology perspective while still upholding our service delivery standards. I was especially excited to listen to our esteemed panels discussing important topics like cybersecurity and data, and how the City protects staff and citizens as government entities remain prime targets for cyber-criminals,’ said Alderman Uys.

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Issued by: Media Office, City

Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office