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That was one of my key takeaways from a recent session with the Institute of Directors in Ireland, where I’m currently based. I attended in my capacity as a member and board director of the South African education non-profit Good Work Foundation (GWF), and this high-level talk about the skills of the future board members got me thinking.
There is currently a lot of buzz about AI tools transforming the workplace of the future (actually, even the workplace of today) and how we need to race to adapt our skill sets accordingly. It’s often framed as a doom-and-gloom scenario, causing a lot of uncertainty.
Wielding AI
However, it was an eye-opener (and something of a relief) to hear insights that AI is unlikely to replace us humans in the workforce. Rather, it seems, the person who can deploy and leverage AI and other digital tools will be in hot demand.
This is reinforced by the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, which states that AI and information processing technologies are expected to create 11-million jobs globally by 2030, while simultaneously displacing nine million jobs. Generative AI and autonomous systems will increasingly take over certain roles, such as clerical, administrative and data-capturing jobs, and much knowledge work as we know it today will be transformed completely.
Herkulaas MvE Combrink 24 Jan 2025 Somewhat alarmingly, the report also predicts that on average, workers can expect that 39% of their existing skill sets will become outdated or be transformed by 2030. This underscores the need for us all to quickly pivot, adapt and transform our skill sets – or risk being left in the dust of more tech-savvy new adopters.
This reality applies across sectors and industries, but for those of us in education (both in the formal system and at non-profits such as ours), it’s a wake-up call to change our mindset and be responsive to the rapidly shifting sands of the labour market.
Bridging the digital divide
In South Africa, where many young people are already lagging behind their global peers in education, this need is particularly pressing. How do we bridge the already wide skills gap while meeting the needs of the changing job market? How do we equip our young people to step out into this future – a future many of us find hard to imagine, and even a little scary?
GWF already provides transformative digital-led learning opportunities to young people in rural Mpumalanga and the Free State, including coding and robotics, to prepare them for the world of work. But we know we can never rest on our laurels. It’s not enough for kids to merely be digitally literate – in the 21st-century workplace, they will have to be digital natives. They will need to be as comfortable interacting in the virtual world as they are in the real world. It must be second nature to them.
For this reason, we are integrating AI-enabled and virtual reality-augmented experiences into our learning environments. This includes using spatial AI to transform and enhance how young people learn, bridging physical and virtual environments in an immersive way.
Beyond what many people automatically think of when hearing "AI" – such as getting ChatGPT to do your assignments for you – such technology holds several useful real-world learning applications. Wouldn’t it be amazing, for example, to be able to train in a virtual environment before going into a real work environment?
Simulations
Imagine a young jobseeker attending a simulated job interview in a virtual setting to settle their nerves before attempting the real thing. Imagine a conservation student transporting themselves virtually into the Kruger National Park to identify fauna and flora up close and personal. Imagine a child being able to see a 3D visualisation of a Lego Spike robot before building and coding it to move in real life.
These technologies are poised to be game-changers in our learning environments – and I urge educators to explore and embrace them rather than fear digital disruption and innovation. This will require open minds as well as a willingness to embrace lifelong learning as part of their own educational journeys, so that they can keep pace with technological change and pass on this knowledge to learners.
Of course, we must balance the use of AI and technology with the need to still think critically and creatively – not to mention originally. But it’s an exciting and exhilarating space in which to be playing.
Already, exposure to digital technology is opening exciting new worlds of opportunity for South Africa’s young people. We need to arm them with as many skills as possible so that they can step out confidently into this brave new world that is changing before our eyes.
