e-Skills Academy takes off

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 10 Mar 2008

President Thabo Mbeki will later this week formally open the e-Skills Academy at its Sandton campus.

The academy opened its doors in January - four months after being announced at a Presidential International Advisory Council on the Information Society and Development, in August last year.

The academy is headed by former Oracle executive Dan Ellappa, who says 63 students started an Oracle Enterprise Development Programme (EDP) today. The year-long programme involves 17 Oracle interns and 63 formerly unemployed graduates, contracted by 11 Oracle SME partners.

"While they are in the year-long internship, they receive a stipend and this year the stipend is linked to performance criteria... and in some of the partners the stipend will increase as they meet their KPIs," Ellappa says. He adds that, under the EDP, the contracts may be renewed.

Ellappa says two of the SMEs involved are based in the Cape, one is in Port Elizabeth and the remainder are located in Johannesburg.

In addition, the academy is from today presenting a graduate programme for 17 Oracle interns.

Getting ahead

The 80 join 27 Oracle database administrators who attend "night school" at their own expense to better their skills. "The Workforce Development Programme is a programme that aims to cross-skill individuals that want to progress their learning part-time," Ellappa says.

"The cost of the programme is currently 50% less than doing it fulltime during the day, which is a huge benefit for individuals 'up-skilling' themselves."

In addition, the academy has already opened a Cape Town office to train eight interns put forward by Synalogic and Optisolutions. Their training got under way last week.

He says 25 more students will start on a self-funded Oracle "developer track" at the end of April. "It is to create Java developers for a market that is in dire need of them," says Ellappa. "There are individuals with some years of working experience who will really be hitting the ground running," he adds.

Meanwhile, another batch of graduates - from Sybase - will join the student body next week, also to acquire Java skills. Sybase will include their product set and developer tools in the year-long training programme. "But by a year we mean that a maximum of four months is spent in training and the rest of the time is spent in the workplace. It is on-the-job training for more than 70% of the time."

Getting proactive

"The whole idea of this academy is to create an ethos that says you must take your career development in your own hands," adds Ellappa.

"You must not wait for your employers to up-skill you. Invest in your own growth. Invest in your own earning potential. Invest in your own upliftment."

Ellappa says future plans include collaboration with Microsoft to teach software development business and programme management skills. "This will allow us to graduate rounded individuals," he says. There are plans to train 30 students in Gauteng and 20 at the Smart Xchange in Durban.