Recession or no recession, there’s still a lot of work to go around. And someone has to do it. South Africa’s efforts to develop enough skills to meet its needs have, to put it mildly, failed. Something must be done.

Says Hamilton Ratshefola, MD of Cornastone Consulting: “The first National Master Scarce Skills List for SA indicated the country had a critical shortage of nearly 40 000 ICT workers. Cisco predicts a 24 percent shortfall in terms of supplying the number of IT workers needed by 2009, especially in “specific technology areas”, and a 30 percent shortfall in advanced networking skills. Last year, Gartner warned that the coming generation is likely to shun the industry because of a perceived lack of glamour and a reputation for hard work. South Africans don’t appear to be rushing to acquire the IT-related skills that organisations are looking for.”