Ebony and Ivory Park
Ebony Park is typical of the emerging lower-middle class of South Africa with predominantly RDP style housing and a population with a growing disposable income. Ivory Park, on the other hand, is more informal with a muddle of tin shacks, mud-brick, and face-brick housing that is very typical of many South African townships.
To summarise some of our research in the area (which we believe holds true for similar settings in South Africa as well), we have identified the following:
- A need to address the digital divide between the IT-literate and IT-illiterate of South Africa (the latter are almost entirely excluded from the main stream economy)
- A need for basic business and entrepreneurial skills (writing CVs, drawing up budgets, using excel, etc.)
- A need for easy access to information (health info - like HIV or TB info; government info - like social grant or SMME grant info; employment info; and learnership info)
- A need for quality educational initiatives and additional training and support for teachers, principals, administrators and learners in our public schools
- A need to capitalise on government’s Gautengonline project (provincial government is installing 24-station IT labs into every school in the province - at best the labs are currently underutilised - primarily due to lack of teacher confidence and awareness of the potential benefits. There is seemingly almost NO computer aided curriculum delivery happening)
- The national skills crisis (e.g. SA has a short fall of roughly 60 000 qualified IT professionals - huge opportunity exists to establish a learnership project matching promising candidates with needy IT companies)
- The prevailing school maths and science results and the inevitable problem training skilled labour, read this article for an oversight of the problem from the folk at the Centre for Development and Enterprise.