Durban - DISCUSSIONS on the Fourth Industrial Revolution dominated the Youth Employability Indaba and KZN Career Expo yesterday.
Hundreds of high school pupils filled the Durban Exhibition Centre in search of the perfect career path.
Councillor Ntando Khuzwayo said the exhibition was designed to reflect the future of jobs as there were more exhibitors with a focus on robotics, IT and coding.
“We want them (the pupils) to look at innovation. The companies that are here are those that are dealing with the latest and future technologies, and we want our young people to start thinking along those lines,” he said.
“Unfortunately, our education system does not yet provide fully what we offer here.”
One of the exhibitors that encompassed the theme was SmartiPants Technologies, a Durban-based entity that focuses on 3D prototyping, drone technology, artificial intelligence, coding, mechatronics and robotics.
“We create small-scale machines and programme them to do specific tasks, and when that is done we sell the prototypes to big companies and they recreate them on a larger functional scale,” explained Nosipho Ndlovu, a computer science student working with SmartiPants.
The company exhibited a number of prototypes, including a self-driving forklift.
The expo ends on Saturday.