Preparing the Future Workforce: The Growing Gap of Digital Literacy Rates in Cape Town's Suburbs

By: Isay Acenas; College of Arts & Science, BA Environmental Studies 2021; Recipient, NYU Africa House/CTED Development Impact Fellowship Award

From now until 2045, around 15 to 20 million young people are expected to enter the South African workforce. Although software development and tourism continue to be the country’s fastest-growing industries over the last 10 years, currently over half of youth between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed. The national government previously acknowledged this rate by pledging to equip youth with the digital skills needed to succeed in the evolving economy. However, at the tertiary (university) level, the progress made in advancing digital literacy among students is addressed on a school-by-school basis. The vast majority of private colleges in South Africa have up-to-date resources for digital literacy (e.g. Android development with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, web development), whereas local public universities whose annual tuition is roughly 30% of that of a private university, are still taking its first steps in integrating basic digital literacy training (e.g. Powerpoint, Microsoft Word) into its library’s services. In a group study of local public university students, 75% of them noted that they did not have access to digital technology at school. Upon further interviews about the culture surrounding technology, 60% of participants emphasized that even when a computer was available for use at school, there was a fear of using it because of the cultural and bureaucratic difficulties in using digital technology.

My research interviews also provide a broader socio-historical context to the discrepancies in digital literacy, particularly in Western Cape. It highlights the structures that govern the rates of digital skills development among university students, including everything from the cost of a personal Internet connection to the regional distinctions between skill acquisition and working experience. Due to COVID-19, this research was very difficult to conduct at the project’s fullest capacity, as it requires face-to-face interaction with university students in the inland suburbs of Cape Town who actively experience limited access to technology. However, I am still able to retrieve limited background data from local researchers, teachers, and some students, as well as extensive literature reviews from similar studies done in other provinces. I look forward to completing this project fully on-site once it is safe to do to accurately capture the contexts in which students acquire, and have trouble acquiring, the digital skills that are relevant to employment in the local economy.