Education becomes the new gold in Joburg’s old mining hub

South African tech giant Altron has thrown its weight – and heart – behind a series of future-facing initiatives in Marshalltown in the Johannesburg CBD.

Through Jozi My Jozi, an inner-city revival movement, Altron connected with the Maharishi Invincibility Institute (MII), a skills-to-work university in Marshalltown.

The company has signed up to be the anchor tenant in a new tech accelerator, the Maharishi NextUp Institute of Technology, which was launched last week as an extension of the MII. The vision is to train Jozi’s inner-city students for high-demand roles in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The new institute is at 56 Main Street, a 10-storey building that was originally part of the city’s prestigious mining and banking district. Until the early 2000s it was known as Anglovaal House, home to one of South Africa’s leading mining houses. Now the tech institute will offer courses in AI, robotics and automation, cybersecurity and digital skills, as well as financial and professional services including specialised insurance, banking and financial markets.

“We are here to build skills for the country and break the cycle of poverty,” said Collin Govender, group chief operating officer of Altron, at the launch. It will be a flagship project by Altron, designed to bridge the skills gap and focus on empowering unemployed young people through structured learnership and internship programmes.

Altron has been making an educational impact for 60 years, said Govender, but is now evolving from individual initiatives to partnerships, “because sustainable change is built together, not alone”.

What makes the Maharishi NextUp Institute of Technology model exciting for corporate partners like Altron is that they will have a hand in designing the curriculum so that they can create a pipeline of skilled young people ready to enter their workforce and the broader industry.

The MII already has a 95% success rate in placing its graduates in jobs.

This is all part of a greater vision to build an education precinct in Marshalltown. Already the MII has several university campuses, a high school, a crèche, a soccer field and sports centre – and it aims to educate 100,000 unemployed young people from South Africa’s townships and communities by 2030.

“We’re a quarter of the way there,” said Dr Taddy Blecher, chief executive of MII. More than 25,500 graduates have already moved into meaningful employment through the Maharishi model, 70% of whom are women. Behind this number sit thousands of individual stories of resilience, growth and economic participation,” he said.

Altron has bought into the vision of an education precinct. It already sponsors a digital learning centre at MII’s high school, where more than 200 Grade 8 and 9 pupils are doing programmes in engineering, robotics and coding, while receiving guidance and mentoring to choose subjects that fit their strengths. Through robotics and tinkering with concepts, children develop the confidence and imagination to become innovators, designers and future problem-solvers.

Few children in the inner city have access to cutting-edge educational resources like robotics and tinkering, said Rose Upfold from the education workstream at Jozi My Jozi, who designed this after-school programme for Altron.

“The hubs double up as resource centres for primary schools to use in the mornings, with designated specialised teachers to run classes. Together, these three hubs form an ecosystem of opportunity, identifying talent early, nurturing curiosity and engineering thinking, and creating pathways for students to access stronger educational environments and future careers in innovation and technology.”

It’s all about science, technology, engineering and maths, the STEM subjects, said Govender – and Altron wants to do three things: offer support by providing extra classes for Grade 10 to 12 pupils in these subjects, encourage tertiary studies in computer science and engineering, and ensure inclusivity by offering learnerships specifically for people with disabilities. DM

Bridget Hilton-Barber is a freelance writer who writes for Jozi My Jozi.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.