Challenges facing IT Professionals in Africa

Often times, you find people complaining about the workload they get but the is it really about the amount of work assigned? IT professionals struggle to do their work due to the lack of skills required to do the job. Their organizations do not provide the necessary training to do the work, so they get overwhelmed by the workload and become stressed about their jobs.

Over half of the organizations do not offer training to their employees. They will outsource for skills and talent rather than developing their staff to become expertise at that certain role.

Most IT profesionals lack cybersecurity expertise. Cybersecurity is not prioritized as a threat in most african countries as they often get fewer cybersecurity attacks compared to Europe, China, United States and other nations. More and more huge coperations suffer from data breach, which shows how much of a problem it is. Decision-makers need to assess this issue and consider the security risk they may be putting their company under if there are few security measures in place.

IT profesionals need to be trained to specialize in cybersecurity for assurance and security. Very few africans are specialising in cybersecurity compared to the mass population in the IT industry.

Many IT professionals may specialise in a certain sector in IT, be it Design, Programming, Testing, etc. This means in some areas there are gaps that need to be filled and when the organization does not have people with a certain skill, it becomes a problem. They end up recruiting more people to help specialize in that skill. Managers need to realise that technology changes and traditional methods will soon be replaced. Meaning employees need to be upskilled for the future.

As mentioned above, traditional methods are getting less use in morden society. Digital Transformation should be equals to skills transformation. This means, there needs to be changes introduced. Decision-makers should be open to training the staff to adapt to the transformation. With introduction to many technologies including AI, DevOps, Cloud computing etc, proper training is necessary.

Among other technologies, Cloud computing has proven to be more in demand for organizations looking to scale their businesses together with Big Data. There are very few cloud enginners available in the industry.

Unemployment continues to rise although IT jobs also rise in demand. Managers tend to recruit few people to do the work. This increases the staff workload and constantly work under pressure. This is a concern especially to the youth with skills.

Most Entreprenuers in Africa know that budget is the most constraining factor in a business. Many Many IT Projects are running with a low budget which is both a financial and business risk. Budget tend to produce quality projects because there was alot of investment done on a project. Low budget means we have to get the cheapest IT professionals which may lack the skills required, poor skills will deliver poor quality.

Lack of support and understanding from organisational leadership can undermine IT initiatives. Leadership may have the budget for training the staff but not use it. Lack of support can lead to IT staff leaving because they do not get any motivation and growth for the work they are doing.

Ever since automation was introduced, workers fear for their jobs. In recent years, especially during Covid, IT profesionals were deeply concerned about being replaced by automation and robotics. This also started a huge argument on whether Artificial Inteligence can replace IT staff or not. Jobs are at risk as technology emergies day by day.

IT companies fail to realise that project management is the most important aspect when developing a project. There are few project managers in organisations are many are not aware of the importance of project planning and project management. These so called 'project managers' take your project from start to finish, from planning to deploying phase. They also assess the risk, cost, estimations even before the project start. Without a project manager the business is deemed to failure or uncertancy with delays or even scope creep.

IT profesionals are reported to leave their jobs to persure another job or the same exact job for only one reason, and that is career growth. If the organisation is sturbon to change and resist training their staff, leaving the job is the only option. Both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards can show how much you value your people so they can get motivation to do the job. Mentorship and structured pathway can help play a role in career growth, especially to the youth.