South Africa is facing a severe shortage of networking skills, amounting to an estimated shortage of 70 500 last year and swelling to 113 900 skilled people by 2009, an IT company director said on Wednesday.
Peter Denny, a director of black-empowered IT training company IT Intellect, said a survey, conducted by state lender Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and sponsored by Cisco — which saw the research company interview chief investment officer-level respondents in this country — has pointed out some “alarming shortages in the networking field”.
The report said that the skills gap, as a proportion of demand, is expected to increase from 19,5% to 24,1% by 2009.
“When it comes to general networking technology skills — basic routing and switching — the report estimates that the actual number of skilled people needed to fill the general skills gap was about 34 000 in 2005, growing to more than 44 000 by 2009.
According to IDC, as a proportion of total demand, these figures represent a skills gap of 15,9% in 2005 and 18,2% in 2009.
With regard to advanced technology skills — security, wireless and IP telephony — the estimates indicated that there was a shortage of more than 36 000 people in 2005 and, by 2009, this will rise to more than 69 000, representing a skills-shortage gap of 30,4%, IT Intellect said in a statement.
“What is more alarming is that the respondents believe that advanced technology skills will become more important in the future. Networking technology is critical when it comes to supporting business processes, so this estimated skills shortage is a big worry for business at large,” said Denny.
Commenting further, Denny said that chief investment officers interviewed intimated that they use networks as a key platform to share processes with important partners, suppliers and customers. In addition, when they were asked if network communications would become more important in the future in South Africa, 95% said yes.
Corroborating the sentiments of the IDC report, Denny said: “We obviously need to train more networking candidates. But it is probably going to be necessary for us to import these skills because I do not see this skills shortfall being overcome. As the report suggests, it might also be necessary for the country — and companies — to try and lure back skilled South Africans who left the country for “greener pastures”.
He added that these South African nationals were likely to return with a lot more skills than when they left.
The IDC report also mooted that the purported skills gap is going to have a serious impact on the government’s Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative. — I-Net Bridge