Cape Innovation & Technology Initiative

We will tackle two challenges.

1. A legacy of the Apartheid Group Areas Act is severe under-resourcing of black areas and physical distance from city-based opportunities. Black South African communities are under-served and lack digital confidence to access opportunities:

• Limited technology and connectivity access in disadvantaged communities.
• Few effective, scalable bottom of the pyramid digital literacy interventions.
• Impact of digital illiteracy is exclusion from jobs, government engagement, business, and social opportunity.

2. Decent jobs and opportunities for youth are adversely affected by Covid19:

• Few entry level jobs available.
• Youth need support, resources and opportunity.
• Impact of large numbers of youth not in employment, education or training is long-term unemployment and social exclusion for the individual; negative economic growth and limited innovation for the country

The solution trains and equips unemployed youth to deliver digital literacy training in their communities at scale. This intervention will increase access to digitally-enabled opportunities.

South Africa’s digital divide is a chasm formed along racial lines. Apartheid policy has a ripple effect nearly 30 years after the advent of this country’s democracy. Social, economic and educational inequities disproportionately affect people of colour in South Africa. Lack of effective policy interventions perpetuate this growing digital divide. With the growing digitisation of government, society, education and the economy, we risk further disadvantaging most of the country’s population.

The increasing technology-enablement of business and government means that the public needs to have adequate skill levels to participate in society as a digital citizen. The first issue we seek to address is the enablement of digital confidence and literacy skills for people at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. This could unlock opportunities in accessing services and jobs, doing business and effective digital communication.

The second issue we address is youth unemployment. More than half of young South Africans are not in formal or informal employment, education or training, with youth unemployment estimated at 55,75% by the International Labour Organization. A complex combination of socio-economic factors disproportionately affects black South African youth from participating in the formal economy. These include poor education systems, systemic poverty, lack of financial and social capital, absence of work experience and invariably the lack of literacy, numeracy and communication skills needed by the labour market.

We will address two challenges – narrowing the digital divide among South Africans at scale to broaden opportunities to learn, live, work and transact in a rapidly digitised society; and secondly, enablement of unemployed youth with skills, equipment and market access to meaningful opportunities to learn and/or earn and keep them on a pathway to decent work. Lack of access to technology, tools and connectivity impedes participation of many South Africans in the digital economy.

Our solution has two parts.  Firstly, we will recruit and train unemployed youth in advanced digital skills, behavioural interventions and facilitator skills.

Secondly, we will create a centrally managed programme of digital literacy that successful graduates from our training programme will take into their communities.  This creates a scalable model that delivers quality training at source and of high calibre.

Our programme office will manage quality, governance, accreditation and success measures, whilst supporting Youth Facilitators who are provided with equipment and content to deliver training locally.  This type of model, inherently location-agnostic and exponentially impactful,  will allow us to make an impact on major systemic challenges - digital illiteracy and youth unemployment - in a way which is scalable and sustainable.

The project serves under-resourced, digitally marginalised South African communities (primarily "black" and "coloured", definitions of South African ‘population groups’ officially used in statistical publications and census data). These communities are under-served due to Apartheid social engineering legacy like spatial design, poor education systems, economic exclusion, social stratification and so on.

CiTi will continue to work with communities via government-funded community learning centres, government ward counsellors and seeking to grow relationships with the community elders.

All of our spaces are in disadvantaged communities. The Bandwidth Barn Woodstock Exchange is on the urban fringe and the Bandwidth Barn Khayelitsha is based in the largest black township in South Africa. We have campuses in Braamfontein, in inner city central Johannesburg, and Woodstock, an industrial and lower income suburb in Cape Town. Being embedded in underserved communities means we have already built a lot of credibility and support in the surrounding areas.

We will work through Youth Facilitators and their community leaders to engage communities effectively. We will build in a process of feedback and iteration to ensure training content and delivery is designed consultatively and appropriate to the communities’ needs. Co-creation and moderation of training content is key to our success.

Digital literacy to some does not mean work-based skills, rather practical access to resources they are excluded from. Our approach takes training deep into communities which have may have limited time,  access, resources, technology and connectivity. Small group facilitation and structured, proven methodology, toolset and content leads to greater levels of digital literacy.

Youth Facilitators work within their own communities. Facilitators recognise who is most in need in their direct community which has agency in solving specific digital skill challenges. The model gives youth skills, equipment, support and market access to build the experience as Facilitators and receive outcomes-based earnings.

CiTi has been operating for more than 21 years, and its skills development unit, CapaCiTi, has been delivering tech skills to unlock economic opportunity for more than 11 years. The training element has been delivered throughout CapaCiTi’s lifespan, which demonstrable success and scale to date.

CiTi already operates in township communities. We established the first tech hub in South Africa’s largest township, Khayelitsha. Our Enterprise Development division scales small businesses, and CapaCiTi will tap into their expertise to grow our Facilitators as entrepreneurs.

CapaCiTi has embedded our Tech Champ and intern model where we trained and absorbed candidates to serve future cohorts as they are best suited to support people from their own community. CapaCiTi has seen a lot of success in that structure, and we must build on that successful model to impact the wider community. It is imperative to bridge the digital divide for the broader population.

Our approach seeks to take relevant digital literacy and digital citizenship training to communities in a manner that works for them and accommodates people with limited time/access. Digital literacy to some does not mean work-based skills, rather practical access to resources they’re excluded from. It enables access for a much wider audience and takes the skills training deep into neighbourhoods which have may have limited resources, technology and connectivity. Small group facilitation and a structured, proven methodology, toolset and content would lead to greater levels of digital literacy.

Youth Facilitators work within their own communities. Facilitators define and recognise who is most in need in their direct community. The community has agency in solving specific digital skill challenges as they define it themselves. The model gives young people the skills, equipment, support and market access to build the experience and skillset to progress as Facilitators and begin to receive outcomes-based earnings.

The model is inherently scalable, and will result in a broad range of people from the community trained and able to access relevant opportunities they would otherwise have missed out on due to poor digital skill and knowledge. We recognise that digital citizenship skills goes beyond those skills which prepare the individual for work readiness, and could unlock access to government, health, finance and other necessary support.

The solution served 2,092 youth beneficiaries who are programme alumni, with a target of 318 youth to complete training remaining this financial year. This is the target for our existing digital skills training programme, with ~500 people trained per year with present resources.

In Year 1 of the proposed solution, we will take 60 youth per year through a 6-month training programme and select the top performing 40 Youth Facilitators who enter their communities to deliver digital literacy training. These 40 Facilitators will train up to 5 people pm/6 months, reaching 1,200 citizens in Year 1.

The 40 Facilitators will be tracked through the delivery period of 6 months, after which the top 30 will be selected to continue the digital literacy training and begin earning outcomes-based earnings for their training: 20 Facilitators at Level 1 will be selected to train 10 individuals per month, and 10 Facilitators making up the top performers, called Level 2, will be selected to train 15 individuals per month, allowed them to earn ZAR1,000 per participant who successfully completes the training. This could see Facilitators earning a decent salary of up to ZAR10,000 – ZAR15,000 per month.

This schedule is repeated annually. By Year 5, we will have 340 Facilitators working in the community (200 Facilitators from the 300 prospective candidates who commence the Facilitator training plus the Facilitators who progressed to Level 1 and Level 2). Assuming the maximum training numbers are achieved, this programme will facilitate digital literacy training for ~24,600 citizens. 

CapaCiTi currently tracks its success through the following specific, measurable indicators:

• Number of beneficiaries placed in meaningful work experience, including
  • Time bound internships
  • Learnerships
  • Short-term full-time jobs
  • Permanent full-time jobs
• Number of Trained Beneficiaries
• Number of Beneficiaries enrolled
• Number of provinces CiTi operates within
• Number of host companies signed on nationally
• Percentage of Beneficiaries still in employment 12 months after placement
• Percentage Beneficiaries experiencing salary growth 12 months after placement

For this scaled up solution we will measure:

• Number of Facilitator jobs created
• Number of participants enrolled
• Number of participants completed training
• Improved digital literacy in participants
• Increase opportunities accessed by participants

Success indicators include meeting our targets for the number of youth trained and employed as Facilitators. We will track community participation by number of registrations and completion, and moderate our approach in further iterations to ensure acceptable programme retention and completion rates.

Programme participants from the community and the Youth Facilitators will be satisfied and there will be a measurable and positive shift in digital literacy and confidence among community participants. We will receive positive feedback from the community results of the digital literacy training. We will report an increase in opportunities and enablement among community participants due to digital literacy skills. Facilitators will progress and begin to earn decent salaries independently.

CapaCiTi will be able to leverage additional funding partners to increase the reach into communities by focusing on specific demographics, for example, the elderly or women entrepreneurs in the informal economy.

CapaCiTi Full-time staff: 12

CapaCiTi Part-time staff: 16

CapaCiTi Contractors: 1

CiTi Full-time staff: 9

CiTi Part-time staff: 2

CapaCiTi has been operating for 12 years and our parent organisation CiTi for 21 years.  CapaCiTi is led by Fiona Tabraham, HR and Learning veteran with >20 years’ experience in talent development. Her all-female executive team lead Talent Management, Curriculum Development, Partnership Development and Human Resource functions which are responsible for the strategy, design and delivery of digital skills development and job readiness programmes.

We have learned many lessons over the years to create a future-proof, inclusive society by using innovation and technology to positively transform our present and protect our future. These lessons are valuable insights into what needs to be done to change the future of black Youth through meaningful interventions.  Our team comprises a diverse group of people from various backgrounds. This lends richness to our programme design and delivery, and serves the need to deliver a relevant and current learning experience to our beneficiaries. We have a flat structure which aids continuous iteration based on inputs from the team and the stakeholders they interface with.

Working at this intersect of government, private sector and society means we are uniquely positioned to deliver significant impact. We believe in a South African future that includes all its people. We cannot stand aside and watch the desperate battle of our excluded youth to find opportunity that adds value to their lives and influences their future. We innovate, partner, collaborate, listen, review, amend and learn constantly with our partners – whether funders, government, employers, delivery partners or the youth themselves. 

The CapaCiTi leadership team is an all female team dedicated to the diversification of the digital job market. The South African tech job market remains a largely homogenous group and we endeavour to engage industry on break these patterns and revise the bias towards white university educated candidates for tech jobs.

As an organisation, CapaCiTi works on developing its internal talent pipeline by developing promising young people within our business, some of whom are products of our digital skills training programme.

Our parent organisation, CiTi, actively works on employment equity (EE) and has established a staff-run EE Forum to put diversity plans into action.

CapaCiTi, and CiTi, are well-established in the South African market. As we seek to increase our impact and footprint, we look beyond our borders for partners. 

• We seek human capital as we are considering establishing an advisory board to aid our scale up. 
• Our business model needs to consider new product sets and opportunities to drive the scale up of our operation. 
• The team requires support and guidance in pitching to an international audience of grant funders and investors. 
• We would like to get better at telling our stories and marketing the organisation. For a long time CapaCiTi has been so focused on effective delivery that we have not been telling the right kinds of impact stories to attract the best partners.
• We always want to improve our M&E data collection and insights capability in order to tell effective, data driven impact stories.
• CapaCiTi needs to implement productivity tools and systems to automate and improve some of its operations.

We are keen to collaborate with MIT faculty and initiatives, Solve members and organisations who can help us drive our growth and achieve our goals.

We believe this Mass Digitisation programme proposed herein is vastly scalable and can translate to any country. This is a project which would work as well in the US as it would in South Africa.

Our solution seeks to narrow the digital divide which has formed along racial lines. It offers a scalable solution to mass digitisation, digital literacy and citizenship and youth unemployment. 

We support young, black South Africans by providing digital training and employability skills. In the >10 years that we have been running a skills development programme, the resounding barrier to accessing opportunity has been poor access to technology and connectivity in their communities. In a study we did early in 2020 on the Covid19 pandemic and the digital divide, the typical profile of our youth reflected their communities:

• 70% have Grade 12 or vocational diploma as highest qualification

• 35% have access to a laptop or home computer

• 91% have a smartphone

• 94% use WhatsApp as a communication tool

• 7% don't have access to a home environment that they consider safe

• 65% live in townships/informal settlements

• The higher the level of skill we seek for an intake, the more the township/suburb ratio changes (Where we test for existing IT skills, we see 53% township-based: 47% Suburb-based. Where we have a less skilled cohort it's typically 80%:20%).

The digital divide causes a major discrepancy in the digital confidence of South African youth. We must move beyond learning interventions relevant for a digital native (think typical millennial) and create impactful interventions that meet the needs of our citizens. Without interventions designed specifically to build digital literacy and confidence, the ability to recognise digital potential is impacted. 

The prize will help CapaCiTi build digital citizenship and confidence in our young women and guide and channel them into digitally enabled opportunities. South Africans face a number of constraints which are unique to developing economies, with blackwomen suffering a disproportionate lack of opportunity. Our experience of these constraints is borne out by TechSalon 2018’s findings which identified the following as difficulties South Africans experience that differ from those in developed countries, and effectively impact on them benefiting from digital advancements:

• Confidence – growing up in poverty causes a fear of failure which stops them from trying new things (technology), curiosity and innovation

• Access – free, consistent reliable internet access has a huge impact on digital exploration; South Africa’s high data cost and the slow smartphone penetration in these areas has a negative impact on township technology engagement

• Education system – in 2018, there were still 15 448 schools without computers and 14 682 without internet. Township schools struggle to find teachers who are adequately equipped to teach IT skills, whilst many suburban primary schools teach coding as additional subjects.

Research ICT Africa (2017) elaborates on these constraints in South African households:

• 50% use internet

• 25% have a computer

• 2% have access to fibre connections

• 0.7 % of households in rural areas have access to fibre connections

The prize will enable CapaCiTi to unlock access to technology which could power our solution and amplify our impact. Our solution seeks to improve the socioeconomic mobility of our participants, and we believe having the correct tools to manage the operations and data around the solution will lead to rapid and meaningful iterations of the solution.