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Cape Town – Black South Africans have jumped at the chance for internships at the Digital Academy which seeks to boost skills in the ICT sector.
The organisation launched a programme to identify self-taught coders with a view to develop skills desired by local corporations.
More than 1 500 South Africans applied to join the programme with 67 accepted so far.
“All applicants are black male and female. We accept up to 30% female interns into our programme and this would probably reflect about 20% through all applications,” Gary Bannatyne, co-founder of the Digital Academy told Fin24.
He added that interns are pushed to “fail fast” alluding to the structure at internet giants Google and Facebook which drives innovation.
Expansion plans
READ: Free internships prepare SA coders
This methodology, known as a Lean strategy, puts outcomes of development ahead of complex concepts.
“Many of the start-ups we have worked with avoid the difficult work of finding a repeatable and scalable way to find customers, but rather focus on performing ‘fake’ work such as writing business plans, entering competitions, seeking undirected publicity, taking random meetings, speaking at conferences, participating in long discussions and ‘strategy’ talks,” Paul Smith, co-founder of tech start-up accelerator Ignitor told Fin24 recently.
The Digital Academy placed 87% of candidates into corporations during the last round and Bannatyne said that the Lean methodology had produced results.
“Our methodology of building products with commercial intent has proven to be very successful as our partner, Barclays Africa, is moving some of the products built into their development stack.”
The organisation is based in Johannesburg and is advancing its expansion plans.
“We are currently based in Jo’burg with the expansion of three more units in the CBD by March next year [2016]. We are currently sourcing venues for our expansion into Cape Town and will hopefully go live in March next year conservatively. We are currently in early stage talks with Zambia, Kenya and Ghana to start the process of going up into the continent within the next eight months,” Bannatyne said.
Interns have to commit to three months of training and they are paid a stipend during the internship and Bannatyne said that output results in development.
“Our highest expectation is to be willing to learn and show an ambition second to none to make a substantial contribution in the work that is being done. We have also created a culture of building products that matter and that process being meaningful.”
How will training programmes change the ICT field in SA? Let us know
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