Business

2022 JCSE-IITPSA ICT Skills Survey: SA ICT employers, practitioners look to global skills markets

The number of South African employers reporting they are recruiting ICT skills overseas has increased dramatically in the past year – up from 38% to over 50%.

This is a key finding in the 2022 JCSE-IITPSA ICT Skills Survey – the 12th to carried out by Wits University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) in partnership with the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA), with the support of the Information Technology Association (ITA).

The study’s authors, Adrian Schofield, production consultant at the IITPSA, and Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE, describe the growing trend to recruit foreign skills as “disturbing, given the continuing high levels of unemployment in South Africa”.

The survey also found that among ICT practitioners, only half of ICT graduates are able to find employment immediately after graduating, with around 25% taking 6 months to a year to find work.

The survey highlighted an urgent and persistent need to raise the game in the education pipeline, to close the local ICT skills gaps.

You may also like...