On 22 and 23 August 2023, the Syft Education team attended PwC South Africa's 29th Annual Education Conference, hosted by Roshan Ramdhany, PwC Education Leader. The conference focused largely on the advent of AI and the ways in which this has the ability to disrupt education and create opportunities to meet the current education crisis that South Africa faces.

The MC of the event, accountant by training and radio broadcaster, Africa Melane, opened by addressing the situation head on and asking us all, "What is the point of wasting a crisis?"

To focus solely on the negatives – palpable though they may be – is to acknowledge but one element of the crisis. Ultimately, crises are not all bad as they give us unique opportunities to innovate. With this in mind, here are some of my reflections on the opportunities available to us thanks to the latest digital disruptions.

Let's take COVID-19 as an example. The pandemic resulted in loss of life and incredible economic hardship. However, it also accelerated the development and implementation of many new technologies and modes of operating. As McKinsey & Company notes, COVID-19 "pushed companies over the technology tipping point - and transformed business forever." Their survey found that responses to the pandemic sped up digital transformation and that many of the changes made then are here to stay. Similarly, the IMF found:

"[As] the crisis recedes, we can now see that digitalization, as measured by the share of workers using a computer connected to the internet, has proved to be a silver lining across many economies."

Prior to the pandemic, digitalization varied drastically between countries, sectors, and companies. However, two years later, there are far more digital companies across different industries and regions.

Similarly, the pandemic forced institutions of learning to digitize where possible. I witnessed this firsthand as all the tutorials I'd previously taught in-person turned virtual and the university I was then at, the University of Cape Town (UCT), opted for an asynchronous learning model, which meant that students could log in and participate in tutorials at any time of the day or night, depending on their internet access. (A bit of a nightmare for me as a tutor but meant to be an equalizer for students.)

This points to one of the biggest challenges that we continue to face when it comes to digitizing educational institutions – access.

Before we consider the lack of access to the internet or the latest tech, it's worth noting the discrepancy between the number of students who qualify for tertiary education and the number who actually make it to campus. One of the Keynote speakers at PwC's Conference was Dr Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, a South African politician and former United Nations official, who now works at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). She explained that although there are many students who get good enough results to get into a university, universities are not able to admit all of those who qualify.

This poses an opportunity for innovation and disruption.

Imagine, for instance, if those who cannot be accommodated in person could be accommodated on a virtual platform, in a parallel university, or in some form of hybrid "blended learning" approach. This could also potentially address the issue of physical infrastructure and space, something which Dr Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka argues should be part of the core budget for education.

On the first day of the conference, Shirley Machaba, PwC regional CEO, spoke about investing in the education sector, considering disruption and opportunities. She noted that higher education is a privilege but also a major opportunity. However, she conceded that connectivity and access to technology is vital and this is something that led to a lot of disparity for students during the pandemic, when teaching had to move online. In her words:

"Access to the internet should be seen as a human right."

Luke Frake expressed this same opinion in a TEDx talk at the University of Kent entitled "The internet needs us, all of us" back in 2015. Frake argued that we should be working towards an internet for everyone. Back in 2015, only 44% of the world could get online. That number has subsequently gone up to 59.5% or 4.66 billion people. However, this still leaves a large number of people without connection.

To make a dent in this number, we may need to follow Frake and Machaba's lead and consider the internet as a human right. Frake argues that this is a good idea for the following reasons:

At a simpler level, phone or Whatsapp consultations serve a similar purpose – something many doctors resorted to during the pandemic.

Frake's second point reminds me of an interesting breakout session I attended at the conference on the place of AI in education, in which Quintin Hawes, EdTech Specialist at PwC, discussed the idea of virtual labs for science students to conduct virtual experiments in when in-person labs were not available. VR Lab Academy is doing exciting work in this space, which has the potential to provide solutions to the lack of physical infrastructure in many of our institutions.

Whether it be internet or virtual reality and the metaverse, it's clear to me that digital technologies have a key role to play in the improvement of our educational institutions, especially at the tertiary level.

The idea of internet everywhere and for everyone is epic but not quite within our reach – at least not yet. The price of a cell phone is still, in many cases, cheaper than the data needed to get online. This is because of the high cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure that's needed to provide internet connectivity, such as fiber optic cables and cell towers.

Big, exciting ideas require many small steps to achieve.

Technology is, in many ways, the ultimate disruptor in that it changes how we function in the world and understand humanity. What seems clear to me is that we need to adopt technology to increase job opportunities and tackle our very high rate of youth unemployment.

As of June 2023, the Youth Unemployment Rate in South Africa is 60.7%, compared to a youth unemployment rate of:

Even within the continent, South Africa is an outlier in terms of its very high rate of youth unemployment.

According to Statistics SA, more than half of unemployed people in the fourth quarter of 2022 had not completed secondary schooling. However, this is not the only guiding factor. As economist and professor, Bonke Dumisa, says,

“Most of our youth do ‘soft qualifications’ and our school education system does not produce people with the training which is readily relevant to the economic needs of the country.”

Thus, youths leave school or tertiary education without the relevant skills needed for the jobs that are available. In addition, young people tend to wait longer in the job market queue before getting their first job and thus, their lack of experience makes it more difficult for them to find employment.

Ideally, we would like to move towards a world that's human-led and tech-enabled. This means that people should have the necessary skills to work with the latest technological tools, including data analytics, data visualization, and AI. In an article on their human-led and tech-powered approach to solving business challenges, PwC notes,

"Business, consumers and society face a technology paradox. Technology has never been more powerful yet pervasive. It has never offered greater potential to drive positive change, while presenting risks that could erode trust. And it has never been more accessible, while heightening fears of exclusion and division."

So, where to from here?

South Africa sorely lacks skills that are needed by the labor market, but in order to address this, we need collaboration from the private sector. Universities cannot bear the burden of preparing students for the workplace alone.

While universities can work on courses that incorporate the latest tech and find ways to offer education virtually as well as in the classroom, the private sector must get involved to inform the kind of content that should be added to the curriculum.

In my own research and discussions with accounting professionals, as an example, I've noticed that there's a real need for students to be equipped with soft skills such as critical thinking and the ability to communicate with clarity. In addition to this, there's a need for students to be able to use the tech that businesses use every day, including Microsoft Word and Excel, Google Docs and Sheets, and, in the commerce space, accounting and CRM software.

UJ now teaches their first year students about AI, which sounds like a great initiative. However, I don't necessarily think every university needs this off the bat. Let's get the basics right first. And, when universities don't have capacity to add to their curriculum, there are a host of external parties they should collaborate with.

We have been doing our part to educate students on the practicalities of work and how to use technology in our collaborations with the University of the Free State (UFS), the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), the Institute of Accounting Science (IAS), and Curro High School Rivonia. This is a big part of what Syft Campus is all about – teaching school pupils and university students the skills they need to thrive in the ever-evolving, digital working world.

While I know we play a very small role in the greater scheme of things, especially as we focus predominantly on accounting, I'm heartened in remembering a quote by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu: "there is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time." I'm happy to be part of this small bite of the giant problem that is South African education and would encourage everyone who has the capacity to make their own small bite to do so.

Bite by bite, we may notice that it's not just about the universities or the private sector or the government (the elephant in the room as far as the conference discussions went). What's needed is a culture of technology in the country as a whole. We need an ecosystem that welcomes technology, embraces it, and inculcates it at every step of the educational journey.

This goes hand-in-glove with a culture of lifelong learning and a willingness to continuously adapt to change. In South Africa, we often use the term "transformation" to refer to improving racial diversity, reducing poverty, and revolutionizing economic policies. Education is yet another sphere that needs to be transformed and digitization is key.

While some scary stats were shared at the conference – such as 87% of of foundation-phased pupils not being able to read for meaning – I was left with a sense of hope. There are so many people who passionately care about improving education in South Africa and, unlike in other countries where new technologies may be treated with suspicion, we are very open to trying the latest tech.

I believe that this is because South Africans are required to innovate on a daily basis. We adapt our lives to accommodate loadshedding and dysfunctional robots (traffic lights, for those not familiar with South African lingo), we reroute around potholes, and we make plans when water outages strike... If we can adapt in so many little ways every day, we can certainly adapt our educational systems. What do you think?