South Africa’s annual ICT skills survey, released this week, said there remains a chronic shortage of all types of digital skills in the local technology sector.

The economy, meanwhile, is in ‘dire straits’, says the report, and over the last two years it “has dipped into technical, if not actual, recession, only to be ‘saved’ by exceptional performances in one or two sectors”. These performances cannot sustain the economy, and there is no effective plan to reverse the increasing levels of unemployment, it said.