NYARI SAMUSHONGA: Unless we fix SA’s human infrastructure, we will crash

SA is feeling the effects of load-shedding, shrinking commuter rail services and unreliable freight services. It has become clear that when the state of public infrastructure does not keep pace with the size and evolving needs of the country, the economy suffers. Alexforbes chief economist Isaah Mhlanga estimates that the SA economy loses R4bn each day that Eskom implements stage 6 load-shedding. These losses are staggering and come when we simply cannot afford them.

Nevertheless, the effects of load-shedding have accelerated the adoption of policy positions on renewable energy and generation by independent power producers (IPPs). The need for a partnership between the private and public sectors to design and roll out innovative solutions to the acute power shortages has gone from a remote possibility to a necessity, on the road to implementation. There are no guarantees that this flurry of engagement will be enough to turn the tide. However, the level of national engagement at least creates an opportunity to build a turnaround strategy and work towards a solution.

Herein lies the concern: while we are seeing the unleashing of a national dialogue on the state of public infrastructure, the discussion on the paltry state of our skills pipeline continues to be muted. We are experiencing a skills crisis that is as catastrophic and urgent as the public infrastructure crisis, and yet it mostly goes unnoticed.

In June, higher education, science and innovation minister Blade Nzimande stated that only 12% of pupils who entered grade 1 accessed the university system, and only 4% would graduate with a university degree. The effect of this leaky pipeline can be seen on the critical skills list gazetted by the home affairs ministry in August.

A review of this list shows a severe shortage of skilled practitioners with science, technology, engineering and mathematics qualifications. This raises an important question: if we are successful in averting the current public infrastructure crisis, how long can we sustain that victory if we do not have a plan in place to ensure we have the needed human capital to maintain and evolve said infrastructure in the future?

Our economic productivity is significantly curtailed by the shortcomings in our public infrastructure. In the short term we lose billions of rand as we fail to deliver goods and services to a captive market. In the long term, our past failures to deliver will hurt our credibility and close up opportunities as potential buyers of our goods and services look to more dependable providers.

Likewise, the cost of unoptimised education funding is high unemployment and millions of citizens precluded from economic participation by their lack of relevant skills. This worsens the public infrastructure crisis as we fail to build the competence to sustain the changing economic landscape and maintain economic growth.

In 2021 the World Bank estimated SA’s GDP per capita as $13,126, compared to a GDP per person employed of $52,328. At the time that these estimates were produced, Stats SA reported an unemployment rate of 34%. Growing the proportion of the population that is economically active would create significant opportunities for economic growth. When we consider the digital skills shortage, those growth opportunities are available.

In 2020, Harambee’s report “Mapping Digital and ICT Roles” estimated that there would be at least 40,000 entry-level jobs added annually. Juxtapose this with the department of higher education and trainings’ estimate that traditional universities graduate 2,900 computer science graduates each year. As a consequence of this undersupply, many of these entry-level digital jobs either go unfilled or are sent overseas to countries such as India and Poland.

The intention of adding the skills shortage to the growing list of national crises is not to create yet another cause for panic and despair. Rather, the goal is to prioritise it among the major national problems that require urgent attention and innovative solutions.

Similar to addressing the electricity shortage through partnerships with IPPs, we need to identify working education models and curricula that are delivering quality training outcomes in the private sector, and scale them up through partnerships with the public sector. Parallel to this we must adopt new pathways and pedagogies for learning that allow us to ramp up the number of young people who can be successfully equipped with economically relevant skills.

Through these shifts we can transform the state of our skills pipeline. Discipline in policy formulation and execution with co-ordinated action between the private and public sectors will enable us to build an education and skills development infrastructure that will take us beyond the next few years.

• Samushonga is CEO of WeThinkCode.