Microsoft South Africa, in partnership with government’s Jobs Fund, intends training more than 3 000 unemployed graduates over the next three years to allow them to find permanent employment in the country’s technology sector. Microsoft is investing R146m in the programme and the Jobs Fund will match the figure.

The initiative will expand on Microsoft’s 4Afrika Initiative and will be partially funded by it. Microsoft South Africa MD Mteto Nyati says 4Afrika is largely dependent on partnerships.

Microsoft announced the 4Afrika Initiative in February, under which it wants to get tens of millions of Windows Phone-based smart devices in the hands of young Africans; bring a million African small and medium-sized enterprises online; train 100 000 skills; and help an additional 100 000 recent graduates develop “employability skills”, 75% of whom the company says it will help place in jobs.

“In terms of the target audience, we have a very strong bias to the youth and small businesses,” Nyati says. “We intend, through the 4Afrika Initiative, to touch 1,5m young people in South Africa in various ways. We want to provide them with relevant skills so that they can go and get jobs or create enterprises for themselves.”

Microsoft International president Jean-Philippe Courtois says the programme will expand Microsoft’s existing skills development programmes and is designed to make an impact on the “massive problem of youth unemployment in South Africa”.

“We cannot let an entire generation of young people become long-term unemployed,” Courtois says, adding that the new initiative aims to triple the training outreach programmes undertaken by Microsoft in the past.

Government’s Jobs Fund is also planning to place students with 3-year IT-related degrees and diplomas in 12-month internship programmes via its Student2Business programme, with a target of a minimum of 75% of participants employed full-time by the end of their training. Other partners in the programme include Absa, Vodacom, EOH, Datacentrix, Dimension Data, Investec and Accenture.

Applicants must be unemployed and between the ages of 18 and 35. Microsoft wants 85% of participants to be black and will also train disabled students.

Courtois says “access” and “confidence” are essential to getting people employed in the technology sector and “breaking the cycle” of poverty.

The Jobs Fund was established in 2011 with a budget of R9bn. To date, the fund has approved grant funding of more than R3,4bn, of which R1,2bn has been allocated to initiatives led by the private sector, creating 20 000 jobs in the process.

Nyati says Microsoft’s Student2Business initiative, in conjunction with government agencies, has already trained more than 6 500 unemployed graduates and placed 75% of them. Nevertheless, he says efforts needed to be accelerated.