iGEMS Board members and some of the programme‘s alumni at Friday’s event. (Photo: Leon Hugo) 
Ten years ago, iGEMS began with the mission to strengthen South Africa’s engineering talent pipeline in the Eastern Cape.
The “Incubating Great Engineering Minds” programme, known as iGEMS, is a flagship initiative of the Unity in Africa Foundation. It was founded in 2015 to bridge the gap between education and employment.
iGEMS director Berenice Rose said she was happy to announce that every engineer produced by the programme had found employment.
“We realised that the Eastern Cape will need something different,” she said. “We were finding a way to keep engineering talent in Nelson Mandela Bay.”
“Ten years ago, iGEMS began with a dream — to connect education with opportunity, to grow South Africa’s next generation of engineers,” Rose said. “Today, that dream is a living, breathing reality that continues to change lives.”
There are four phases in the iGEMS programme.
Learners with potential to become engineers are identified in grades 11 and 12 and receive academic support in maths, science and coding, along with life skills and leadership development training.
After completing Grade 12, they spend a structured year gaining real-world work experience through industry placements, bridging the gap between school and the professional environment.
iGEMS students are then placed at a university with continued mentorship and guidance.
The programme accepts 20 learners annually and at first saw about 12 students advancing to university, but in the past two years, the retention rate has improved to 85%, according to Rose.
The first students graduated from the programme in 2022, and in 10 years, the programme has produced 27 students – all of whom have been permanently employed.
President of Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber Kelvin Naidoo said the programme broke “the trend” of what Warren Buffett called the “lottery of the womb” – meaning a child’s socioeconomic status would determine their future.
“What you are doing is breaking that trend. You can look at what this programme is doing, and how you are changing outcomes, probabilities and the likelihood of success,” he said.
Naidoo said education was the one area in which South Africa had fallen behind the fastest. “Today’s graduates are unemployable. It takes four years before they can be ‘left alone’,” he said, stressing that this was what made the iGems graduates so valuable and in demand, as they already could work in an engineering environment.
Rose said that one of the outstanding achievements of the programme was that graduates were also equipped with soft skills, such as public speaking and leadership training, to increase their employability and make them stand out in the industry.
“We wanted to keep talent here, in the Eastern Cape — to build futures right here, in Gqeberha,” she said.
Sachin Louw, from Gelvandale High School, a network automation engineer, was the first to graduate from the programme. He also attended Friday’s celebrations.
Hayley Kerspay joined the programme in 2017. She has now graduated with an engineering degree. “iGems was like my second family. They shaped me into the person I am today,” she said. “It has a profound impact on my life. Without this programme, I would not have found my passion. I am very grateful for the guidance and support,” she said. “I also want to highlight how this programme taught us to become resilient,” she said.
Mandilakhe Gqolana, who last year received his Master’s degree in financial engineering from the University of Cape Town, is now employed at RMB. He started the programme in 2018 when he attended Patterson High School and qualified with degrees in, among other subjects, astrophysics and applied mathematics.
“When I started the programme, I was very analytical, some would say almost robotic. It helped me communicate with people and time management. Now I already have a good understanding of how to engage with people. He said that where he was working now, in banking, only 30% was the technical aspect of the work, and 70% was the way you related to people.
“No matter how technical you are, you need to explain it to people, and for that, you require soft skills. Thank you for the dream you had to do this. There are so many things to do and to achieve,” he said. DM