South Africa government to benefit from inaugural Tech Mahindra programme

JOHANNESBURG: About 100 students from South Africa will travel to Hyderabad next month to attend an inaugural training programme initiated by Tech Mahindra which will help them support the IT industry in the country.

"The programme involves training of 100 students from the Free State Province at the Tech Mahindra Centre in Hyderabad for a period of six months to directly impact the employability of the participants and also help them support Government ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) initiatives and the needs of the South African IT industry," said Prasad Kotikela Head of Tech Mahindra, South Africa.

"51 students are leaving by next week and the rest by the end of the month for training, including two months of live experience with major international clients of Tech Mahindra, which will lead to international certification in information technology security after" Kotikela said.

Kopung Frans Ralikontsane, Director General of the Free state government said the project was initiated after two visits to India last year by the Free State province Premier Ace Magashule.

"Our Premier is very partial to skills development in general and he visited India with a huge delegation twice last year to look at the possibilities of cooperation, and this public-private partnership with Tech Mahindra resulted from that," Ralikontsane said.

"On their return they will be deployed in municipalities in the province and in provincial government departments," he added.

Abhijit Lahiri, Senior Vice President for Global Delivery at the Tech Mahindra headquarters said yesterday that Africa was of strong interest to the company.

"We started investing in Africa around six years back, predominantly in IT, and then we went into the business services area as well," he said.

"In that process, we have been able to train about 2,000 students in 11 countries in line with our belief that the future of the industry lies not in doing everything out of India - it has to be highly localised," he added.

Indian High Commissioner Ruchi Ghanashyam thanked Tech Mahindra for following the example already set by other Indian companies with a presence in South Africa of creating a win-win situation by developing local people to replace Indian staff.

Ralikontsane said his government was looking at developing a longer term relationship with Tech Mahindra in other areas as well.

Kotikela said that plans were already under way to train 30 South African military veterans as part of the company's corporate social responsibility programme to make them employable.

"By the end of 2016 we hope to have trained 1,000 people in South Africa," he added.