CETA Administrator Oupa Nkoane says the scale of South Africa’s infrastructure ambitions requires a fundamental rethink of how the skills development system works with industry
South Africa must use its major infrastructure investments not only to build physical assets, but also to systematically build the skilled workforce the country needs and create pathways into employment for thousands of young people.
This is the vision behind the Construction Education and Training Authority’s (CETA) strategic partnership with the V&A Waterfront, where a R24bn expansion programme over the next 15 to 20 years is expected to generate approximately 27,000 construction-phase employment opportunities.
For CETA, the significance of the partnership extends beyond a single development in Cape Town. The skills authority believes the initiative provides an opportunity to demonstrate how South Africa can more deliberately connect major infrastructure investment with skills development, workplace-based learning and sustainable employment and ultimately develop a model that can be replicated around other large-scale developments.
CETA Administrator Oupa Nkoane said the scale of South Africa’s infrastructure ambitions requires a fundamental rethink of how the skills development system works with industry.
“The SETA landscape needs to be altered consistently with the thinking that is evolving with the sector. It needs to be industry-led.”
Nkoane said CETA wants its performance to increasingly be judged not simply by how many people enter training programmes, but by the impact of that training and the sustainability of the employment opportunities that follow.
Higher Education and Training Minister Buti Manamela addressing delegates during the launch of the CETA-led work integrated partnership at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town recently
Connecting training to real economic opportunity
South Africa continues to face a profound unemployment challenge, particularly among young people, while major sectors of the economy require practical, technical and artisan skills.
The V&A Waterfront partnership seeks to confront this disconnect by linking skills development to a live pipeline of investment, construction activity and actual employer demand.
V&A Waterfront CEO Graham Wood said the scale of the precinct’s long-term development programme makes collaboration with CETA and the wider skills ecosystem essential.
“We’ve been engaging with the Construction SETA about how we come together as the V&A Waterfront with this very ambitious masterplan... How do we capacitate that, how do we provide the opportunity for youngsters to come into this industry?”
The development programme will require a substantial pipeline of practical and technical skills, including bricklayers, artisans, plumbers and electricians. As the precinct expands with new residential developments, hotels, retail and restaurants, the economic opportunities will extend well beyond construction into sectors such as hospitality, services and transport.
Wood said this makes collaboration between CETA, other SETAs, TVET colleges, employers and the V&A Skills Academy critical to preparing young people for opportunities arising from the development.
“This is about a process of collaboration and leveraging our ecosystem to create those opportunities.”
The V&A Waterfront and CETA have already formalised their partnership through a memorandum of understanding, providing a platform from which the parties can deepen collaboration around the skills requirements associated with the development.
Minister of Higher Education and Training Buti Manamela said closer collaboration between industry and the post-school education and training system is critical to addressing South Africa's skills and unemployment challenges. He emphasised the need for employers to open workplaces to young people and work with TVET colleges and SETAs to ensure that training is increasingly aligned with the skills required by industry and leads to meaningful workplace experience and employment opportunities.
The CETA-V&A Waterfront partnership gives practical expression to this approach by bringing skills development closer to a live pipeline of investment, employers and employment opportunities. It also aligns with the broader national drive to use infrastructure investment as a catalyst for economic growth and employment.
In his 2026 State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that government has committed more than R1tn in public investment over three years to build and maintain infrastructure, emphasising the role of infrastructure investment in driving jobs, productivity and economic growth.
The president also identified skills development as central to this agenda, outlining a shift towards a dual training model that combines education with practical workplace experience and calling for stronger alignment between training, industry participation and the needs of the economy. For CETA, the V&A Waterfront partnership demonstrates how this ambition can be translated into practice by connecting major infrastructure investment with skills development, workplace exposure and pathways into employment.
A model that can travel
The challenge facing South Africa is therefore not simply whether infrastructure investment can create jobs, but whether the country’s skills development system can anticipate those opportunities and prepare people for them at sufficient scale.
The strategic importance of the V&A Waterfront partnership for CETA lies in its potential to demonstrate how this can be done and then replicated elsewhere.
As lead SETA, CETA will play a coordinating role, bringing together skills funding, quality assurance, accreditation and stakeholder coordination while working alongside other SETAs, employers, TVET colleges and industry partners. The model brings together CETA with supporting SETAs whose sectors will also benefit from economic activity generated by the precinct.
Nkoane said the ambition extends beyond the V&A Waterfront.
“This is a model ideally we want to replicate in various areas so that the resources we have as CETA, we want to maximise, we want to have a sustainable impact.”
The approach represents a shift from skills programmes operating separately from economic investment towards a model in which major developments themselves become platforms for training, workplace experience, employment and enterprise development.
From numbers trained to lives changed
For CETA, one of the most important principles underpinning the partnership is that the success of skills development cannot be measured only by the number of learners enrolled or qualifications awarded.
The focus must increasingly be on what happens after training whether young people enter workplaces, remain economically active, develop sustainable careers and, in some cases, establish enterprises that create further employment.
This emphasis is shared across the national skills development system. National Skills Fund CEO Melissa Erra said that the NSF increasingly wants to support young people throughout their development journey, from entering programmes through to employment or becoming economically productive through entrepreneurship. She also stressed the importance of collaboration between industry and skills development institutions to achieve greater scale while avoiding duplication.
The V&A Waterfront already has experience of this approach through its Skills Academy, established three years ago to prepare young people for workplace opportunities within the precinct. The proposed partnership creates an opportunity to build on that foundation and significantly expand the connection between training and the economic opportunities generated by the broader development.
Infrastructure must leave a human legacy
CETA believes South Africa’s infrastructure programme provides an opportunity to fundamentally reshape the relationship between skills development and economic growth.
Rather than waiting for skills shortages to emerge once major projects are already underway, skills planning should increasingly happen alongside infrastructure planning. This would allow SETAs, employers, training institutions and government to anticipate demand and begin preparing young people for opportunities before those opportunities arise.
The V&A Waterfront initiative is envisaged as a proof-of-model that could ultimately inform similar approaches around major developments elsewhere in South Africa. The proposed model places CETA at the centre of coordinating skills development around a live economic ecosystem, with the intention of learning from the first node and applying those lessons elsewhere.
For CETA, the principle is clear: the legacy of major infrastructure investment should not be measured only by what South Africa builds, but also by the people it skills, the jobs it enables and the economic opportunities it creates.
