Zensar launches the Learnership Development Programme for skill building in South Africa -The programme will help create 120 industry-ready students for the local IT industry - Location: Johannesburg, South Africa | Date: 18/11/2009 Zensar Technologies, the leading global IT and BPO services provider today launched a Learnership Development Program (LDP), to create industry-ready IT talent for South Africa. Under the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) initiative, the Company will identify local students as part of the programme and will offer training programmes and skill development opportunities to assist those in need, to enable wider economic development.
Commenting on the initiative, Dr Ganesh Natarajan, Vice Chairman and CEO of Zensar Technologies said, “The programme is not just about local skills development but it is also a strategic initiative by Zensar given its focus and future plans on South Africa. We see South Africa as a potential centre for research, education and development, and we are planning to invest significantly in developing global delivery capabilities in the country. This will be an important hub of development activities for all our new markets in the coming years.”
The Learnership Development Program (LDP) will primarily equip students with crucial ICT skills such as software development and testing to help create quality jobs. Training which an essential element of the programme will be conducted at Zensar’s headquarters in Pune while internships will be at different client sites in South Africa. This year we intend to focus on creating 120 industry ready individuals within a year.
Speaking on the occasion, Harish Lala, Country Head, South Africa said “We are committed to delivering value to our clients and the community that we operate in. We believe that information technology (IT) will revolutionise businesses and can be used effectively for the betterment of the society. We are therefore working closely with the community to develop IT skills of the available manpower in the industry and to undertake developmental activities within and outside this industry. To develop a world-class IT industry in Africa and creating a globally competent IT workforce is a goal that we have set for ourselves in the next three years.
The programme will benefit stakeholders ranging from the academia, emerging software developers, and both the public and private sector. A total of 120 South African candidates will join the company’s Learnership Development Programme (LDP) at the Company’s headquarters in Pune, India. The identified group of 20 students will be joining the India training centre in December this year. A second group of trainees is expected to join the programme in March 2010.
The program will include a three-month in-depth technical training module in IT management and will be followed by an internship for three months with a global organisation in India. The students therefore will not only have an opportunity to further develop their programming skills but will also learn about complex IT infrastructure designs and architectures. Further investments will also be made to place deserving candidates in Zensar’s project teams for a 9-month period.
The Company plans to develop local skills to service clients based in South Africa and aims to integrate South Africa in its Global Delivery Model (GDM). Ultimately the programme aims to build sufficient capacity for a development centre to be launched in South Africa within the next 12 to 18 months.
The Learnership Development Programme in South Africa is a part of Zensar’s Centre of Excellence (CoE) program and is focused on imparting quality IT education to students. The objective of the CoE programme is to enable IT workforce development, facilitating creation of global clusters of service oriented competence across the world. The programme sharply focuses on facilitating the creation of trained, globally employable resources across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, among other places across the world. The program focuses on familiarizing students with service oriented solution patterns, processes, problems and pressures.
The first CoE programme has been designed and rolled out with University of Essex as an Academic Partner for UK. The Programme has been jointly conceived, designed and developed to focus on knowledge and talent creation for the UK market. Zensar has also entered into an alliance with the University of Wollongong in Australia to develop a strong partnership for growth in Asia Pacific. The course will be based on the use of UOWs ICT degrees that will be supplemented with Zensar’s proprietary curriculum to enhance industry exposure in graduates having both core ICT skills and industry knowledge – making them business ready. The course will be launched in the first quarter of the coming year. Parul Vaidya - Market Innovation Group, Zensar Technologies,
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