South Africa needs to promote a more modern image of mining that reflects its hi-tech reality as part of efforts to keep critical skills in the country, academics and industry players say.
Prof Glen Nwaila, an associate professor of geometallurgy and machine learning at Wits University, says the four mining schools and nine geoscience schools in South Africa have a total annual intake of between 500 and 700 undergraduate students and about 120 postgraduate students.
“We know that 30% of this number don’t go and work directly in the fields that they were trained in ... They end up working as investment bankers, consultants in environmental firms, and some of them even work for different government agencies,” Nwaila told Business Times. “The data... says a quarter of them will end up overseas.”
The University of Johannesburg typically produces about 300 graduates with four-year degrees in geosciences annually, and one in four of them seek opportunities in other countries.
Mustak Ally, the head of skills development at Minerals Council South Africa, said the council plays an active role with the government, the private sector and institutions such as the mining qualifications authority to identify skills that are needed in the mining sector.
We’re losing a lot of skills and one would put it down to various reasons. I spoke [at the conference] about the perception around mining being dark and dangerous and having a lot of legacy issues. And I think what we’re trying to do is demonstrate that mining has evolved from what we’re used to in the past in a South African context.
— Mustak Ally, Minerals Council South Africa head of skills development
“We’re losing a lot of skills and one would put it down to various reasons,” said Ally, who addressed the Mining Indaba on the topic. “I spoke [at the conference] about the perception around mining being dark and dangerous and having a lot of legacy issues. And I think what we’re trying to do is demonstrate that mining has evolved from what we’re used to in the past in a South African context.”
He said the Minerals Council worked with Wits University and the department of higher education & training to set the curriculum for mine engineering and geoscience degrees and to remove barriers to entry for those who wanted to enter the profession.
“The approach to mining is advancing, and no longer should we only be seeing it through a lens of labour intensity. So the idea is to say, yes, we want to retain, we want to develop; we need to go out, we need to communicate what mining is about so we can retain our skills and keep them here.”
But Ally noted there were advantages to having an internationally mobile cohort of mining professionals.
“Obviously ... we need to make sure we take care of our own first before we export those skills. [But] in exporting those skills and having an opportunity to understand in a global context what is happening in the mining space, these young professionals can cross-pollinate into our jurisdictions.
“And likewise, we can pollinate into their jurisdictions about some of our challenges and some of our issues.”
In the broader context, estimates were that the number of unemployed youth in Africa would be “very close to half-a-billion” by the end of the decade.
Mosa Mabuza, CEO of the Council for Geoscience, told Business Times that it could benefit South Africa if its mining professionals who found jobs overseas made their employers aware of investment opportunities back home.
I think that South Africa is the best training ground for the skills.
— Mosa Mabuza, CEO of the Council for Geoscience
“South Africans operating overseas is a very good thing,” he said. “We must dominate that space as South Africans.”
It was a concern though that many South Africans who had gone overseas seemed to lack a patriotic spirit.
“I think that South Africa is the best training ground for the skills. We are just not very good at promoting our capability. We have become very good at agonising,” Mabuza said.
Charl Marais, local business line manager for mining at technology company ABB, said it was critical to raise awareness that the South African mining sector was aspiring to build “the mine of the future”.
“We have an industry, actually globally, that is quite stuck in the old way of doing things. The challenge in some of our markets, for example the South African and African markets, is that we need to start convincing people of the benefits of doing things differently.”
He said mines needed to move more quickly towards automation, using such technology as digital control systems.
Business Times
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