NEWS

The South African-German initiative Skills for Green Jobs (S4GJ) is based on a partnership between GIZ/S4GJ on behalf of the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) with the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

The initiative aims to improve the conditions for the supply of adequately skilled personnel and energy efficient technologies and centres on support measures to improve coordination among public and private stakeholders.

These joint endeavours of the DST and GIZ/S4GJ is to bring industry, organised business and technology stations/universities and science councils together in order to respond to demand for the following; (i) green manufacturing and localisation advancements in renewable energy technologies as well as (ii) energy and resource efficiency advancements.

With the support of the DST and their Technology Localisation Implementation Unit (TLIU) a number of experiential learning projects (ELP) were initiated through a call addressed to all technology stations, universities and science councils. As an example the following project have been selected for implementation:

Project partner and implementer: Vaal University of Technology and its Technology Station in collaboration with Pegasus Consulting and Danone SA: Reducing the energy demands of a milk processing plant through dual fuel technology (biogas as diesel substitute)

PEM Consult in collaboration with Mesopartner Africa, a specialised firm for technology and innovation management consulting in South Africa, has been contracted in autumn 2015 by GIZ to support the TLIU in implementing the selected projects. This covers technical and managerial expertise, as well as cooperation and training arrangements with German science and technology partners.