Johannesburg - Nelson Mandela’s home village got its first high school on Friday. It took a $9 million (R97m) investment from German engineering giant Siemens to make it happen.
Like many multinationals, Europe’s largest engineering company has had trouble finding qualified workers in South Africa, forcing it to bring in outsiders for many jobs. So, like scores of other companies, Siemens has started investing in education to help ease the shortfall.
“There are lots of students coming out of school with grades that are really not up to par,” said Rita Nkuhlu, Siemens’ head of corporate strategy in South Africa and the project leader for the Mandela School of Science & Technology in Mvezo, near Mthatha in the Eastern Cape.
While South Africa’s economy is forecast to grow 3 percent this year, versus 1.1 percent for the euro zone, its education system was ranked the third-lowest among 148 countries in a survey by the World Economic Forum last year, ahead of only Yemen and Libya.
Multinationals are aiming to help lift South Africa off the bottom of that list. As about half of all its students drop out of high school in the final two years, the push is often coming at secondary school level rather than the university and apprenticeship programmes they tend to fund elsewhere.
About 36 percent of Fortune 500 companies contribute to education programmes in South Africa, the fifth-highest rate among 20 developing countries, according to research by the Brookings Institution. But 60 percent of such companies fund education in India and 54 percent in China, suggesting there is room for growth.
Corporate money could help ease a chronic shortage of employees who can take on complex jobs. South Africa’s unemployment rate for highly skilled workers has been about 0.4 percent over the past decade, according to employment agency Adcorp, versus 24.7 percent for the broader workforce in the third quarter of last year.
“The sure way to mitigate high levels of unemployment is to make sure that you take the bulk of your people through a huge educational programme,” said Bonang Mohale, the chairman and general manager of Shell South Africa, which has more than 1 500 employees in the country. The local unit of Royal Dutch Shell supports literacy and numeracy programmes and has equipped 45 schools in Kwazulu-Natal with science laboratories.
Siemens would ideally have 400 more employees in the country than its current 1 600, but the talent shortfall kept it from making those hires, said Nkuhlu. Unlike other countries where Siemens operates, many engineers it hires require further training to meet its needs.
It is an experience echoed by luxury car maker BMW, which has introduced a mathematics, science and technology programme at 37 schools in impoverished areas. The company has invested R10 billion in manufacturing and other operations over the past 15 years.
Germany’s BASF, the world’s biggest chemical maker, supports several education projects in South Africa, both practical and pedagogical. The Tutudesk Campaign of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, provides durable, plastic injection-moulded classroom desks. The Kids’ Lab project shows children how to get clean and safe water with hands-on chemistry experiments.
South African firms are also increasingly investing in education projects. Transnet, the state-owned ports and rail operator, says it more than doubled its spending on education between 2010 and 2013, to R864m in the 12 months to March last year. Over the next seven years the firm will spend R8.3bn on skills development for engineers and other workers.
While education represented the biggest single item in South Africa’s 2013 budget, the efficiency of its system, measured in outcomes relative to expenditure, is lower than that in Brazil, Russia, India, or China, a Goldman Sachs study claimed in November.
“We appreciate the support from the private sector, in our quest to improve the quality of education in the country,” President Jacob Zuma said at the Mandela School’s opening ceremony. “We have challenges in science and technology.”
The investments are starting to pay off as the pass rate rose for a fourth year last year, led by improvements in mathematics and science in the continent’s biggest economy.
The pass rate for final year pupils at state schools climbed to 78.2 percent last year from 73.9 percent in 2012, the government said this month. The rate fell for six straight years through 2009 to 60.6 percent.
At Mvezo, Siemens has pledged to help pay operating and maintenance costs for three years. With 25 classrooms, the school will offer 700 students science, information technology, engineering, and agriculture – the latter at the request of the local chief, Nelson Mandela’s grandson Mandla, who wanted to ensure enough workers for Mvezo’s agrarian economy.
It was a 2010 conversation between Nelson Mandela and then-Siemens chief executive Peter Loescher that led to the project. – Bloomberg