Cape Town — President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the National Skills Fund will soon launch a new model for demand-led skills development, which will provide R800 million to fund training for unemployed young people in digital skills.
In his weekly newsletter, Ramaphosa mentioned how since the first South Africa Investment Conference in 2018, investments in the digital economy have grown exponentially.
“Over the past five years, we have seen total investment commitments of R200 billion in our country’s telecommunications network by Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, Rain and Liquid Telecom.
“Faster fibre and 5G rollout makes our economy more competitive as more connectivity solutions help businesses emerge and expand,” Ramaphosa said.
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He added that data centres are seeing more investment.
“In addition to the network providers, Amazon Web Services, Teraco and Dimension Data have made investment commitments of R21 billion in the past five years. Amazon Web Services plans to grow its investment with a further R30 billion in the next six years.”
“According to a recent report on Africa’s Data Centre Market, South Africa is fast becoming a hub for cloud hosting, with the manufacturing, financial services and health care sectors among the major data centre investors. The report further notes that undersea cables are supporting the growth of the local data centre market,” Ramaphosa added.
However, the President noted that in order to take advantage of this inward investment and see it increase, the country has to urgently resolve the electricity crisis and the theft and destruction of ICT infrastructure.
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Compiled by Junaid Benjamin
