ABSA Group continues to show its commitment to addressing critical skills development as was demonstrated during the annual Digital Academy Showcase event.
The Digital Academy has, since 2015, equipped over 400 students with critical digital skills as participants work in simulated software development environments designed to encourage digital product innovation to meet business and industry demand. One of the initiative’s key aims is to build a workforce for the future, and students undergo training in full-stack software development.
The comprehensive training, targeted at the youth and often unemployed, is based on a shared vision of impactful digital skills and resources to build Absa’s modern technology architecture, powering the bank’s digital transformation. As part of The Digital Academy learnership programme, students are required to design solutions for everyday problems. The annual Showcase event provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate their work.
Since inception of the initiative in 2015 with The Digital Academy, 440 students have been trained, with 225 (51%) placed within Absa for six months of workplace exposure. Absa currently has 120 Digital Academy graduates working in its digital, innovation and technology function. Seventy-eight of these graduates have been placed in permanent posts; 30 are on fixed-term contracts; and, 12 graduates are currently with the bank on a learnership basis.
This year, The Digital Academy will embark on two new Unemployed Learnership programmes:
- Unemployed Learnership programme with a total intake of 40 learners
- Unemployed PWD (People Living with disabilities) Learnership with 15 learners
Unemployed Learnership programmes will result in a qualification in systems support learnership at NQF5 level.
Absa Group Chief Information Officer Wilhelm Krige said: “Embracing digital skills remains critically important as we consider our capabilities to adapt quickly to change. At Absa, we believe in investing in people who have not had the opportunity otherwise to be a part of this digital revolution, which has accelerated rapidly because of the global pandemic.”
According to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), for the fourth quarter of 2020, South Africa’s unemployment rate increased to 32.5%. Furthermore, the unemployment rate among youth aged 15-24 stood at a staggering 63.2 %, while for the age group 25-34, the rate was 41.2%.
Gary Bannatyne, The Digital Academy founder, said the collaboration with Absa is vital in helping to address the challenges faced by unemployed youth. “Through The Digital Academy, we can empower young South Africans with economically desirable and sustainable skills so that they have the tools to improve their circumstances.”
Each year, The Digital Academy hosts two intakes of 20 students, who undergo training for six months. The only prerequisite for joining the programme is for students to have completed Matric, to have a foundation in coding, and a passion for technology.
Skills taught at The Digital AcademyÂ
The Digital Academy is a demand-led programme that bases ‘job readiness’ on the skills required to perform value-adding work for Absa. Aside from the foundation learnership skills, the collaboration with Absa sees learners undergo comprehensive training in:
- Full stack development (creating and understanding how a full application works)
- Aside to agile development and soft skills, the development consists of: Frontend Development (HTML/Javascript/Typescript/Angular/React)
- Backend Development (Java/NodeJS/C#/Microservices/MQ)
- Database Development (PostgreSQL,MongoDb,Redis)
- Containerisation and Orchestration (Docker, Docker Compose, Kubernetes, Ansible)
- CI/CD (Jenkins, TeamCity)
- Source Control (GIT, Mercurial)
- Basic server usage and maintenance (Ubuntu administration)
