SA's RedAcademy connects young people to IT jobs

South Africa's youth unemployment rate of 60.7% is the highest globally, according to Statista, and a lack of tech skills negatively impacts the country's economy.

It is against this backdrop that Cape Town-based RedAcademy was launched.

"RedAcademy is an innovative skills and experiential learning hub that specializes in teaching coding and technology skills," said RedAcademy MD Jessica Hawkey in an interview with Connecting Africa.

She said the learning hub's mission is to provide real opportunities for young people while developing a sustainable pipeline of employable software developers to benefit the IT industry.

"Our goal is simple: it is to give talented South Africans the opportunity to sprint into their IT careers," she explained.

She added that because the youth unemployment rate is so high, talented young South Africans don't have enough options to start in IT generally and software development specifically, yet the sector faces a critical skills shortage. This is a paradox RedAcademy has set out to solve.

Launched in September 2023, RedAcademy has partnered with private, public and non-governmental stakeholders to go beyond training and to create guaranteed jobs for young people.

Training through RedAcademy

Hawkey said RedAcademy is a Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) accredited, 12-month demand-led training program in software development that gives candidates a National Qualifications Framework (NQF) Level 5 qualification.

"The first six months of the program is focused on theory which is customized to our client's needs. During the second six months students work on live client projects, whilst being overseen by RedAcademy's technical leadership team," she explained.

RedAcademy aims to give talented South Africans the opportunity to sprint into their IT careers.(Source: RedAcademy).

"The full-year training takes place at our client's premises but is managed by the RedAcademy team," she explained.

She said interested corporates and candidates can find out more on the RedAcademy website.

Competitive Advantage

Hawkey said that even though other companies are offering similar training, RedAcademy is different because it prides itself on selecting from matriculant youth, operating inside the client's environment, offering customized training and completing live client projects.

A similar company to RedAcademy is Womenovate, a female-focused online platform that assists Nigerian women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Agriculture and Mathematics (STEAM) with access to resources, training courses and jobs globally.

Similarly She Code Africa is a non-profit organization that is focused on empowering young girls and women in Africa through technical skills.

Follow Connecting Africa on our new X account @connect__africa to get the latest telecoms and tech news across Africa.

The Youth Employment Service (YES) is another program that is similar to RedAcademy - it provides work experience to previously unemployed youth in South Africa.

YES recently partnered with Microsoft South Africa to provide artificial intelligence (AI) training to 300,000 unemployed youth in South Africa.

Hawkey added that RedAcademy aspires to expand beyond South Africa.

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*Top image is of RedAcademy MD Jessica Hawkey. (Source: RedAcademy).