Call for ‘human infrastructure’ focus ahead of 2026 Budget Speech
4 min read
As Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana prepares to deliver the 2026 National Budget Speech, Riaz Moola, founder and CEO of global edtech company HyperionDev, is urging National Treasury to pivot from funding ‘seats’ to funding ‘salaries’.
He argues that South Africa’s current approach to skills development is hampered by bureaucratic inertia and a focus on course completion certificates rather than actual employment outcomes.
Drawing on HyperionDev’s success with the United Kingdom’s Department for Education Skills Bootcamps, where 88% of graduates secure jobs within six months, Moola is calling for a radical restructuring of the skills development levy and SETA systems.
“Minister Godongwana is right to demand value for money – but in a digital economy, value must be measured by employment milestones,” he says.
“South Africa has an ‘outcomes problem’ because we fund seats instead of salaries. The 2026 Budget should restructure skills funding to mirror the UK model, paying training providers based on their ability to land a student a job. This shifts the risk from the taxpayer to the provider.”
Shift to ‘outcome-based’ funding
Moola suggests the government should move away from the traditional model of funding educational attendance. By tethering financial resources to verified job outcomes, the state ensures every rand spent is an investment in a future taxpayer. “This isn’t just education; it’s a fiscal strategy to expand the tax base.”
Modernising the SETA system via ‘fast-track skills credits’
Moola highlights that while 5G and fibre are vital, they remain ‘hollow pipes’ without a skilled workforce to innovate on them. He proposes a ‘fast-track skills credit’ that allows the private sector to deliver high-intensity, 16-week ‘sprints’.
- The goal: To bypass committee-led delays and move at the speed of the global tech market.
- The precedent: Similar models helped the UK address a 76% digital talent shortage through partnerships with agile private providers and top-tier universities like Imperial College London.
Funding ‘human infrastructure’
Moola calls for AI and cloud architecture training to be reclassified as human infrastructure rather than a secondary education line item.
“Investing in a developer’s capacity to build tools is a capital investment that pays for itself through increased corporate tax revenue and a reduced national dependency on expensive foreign software licences.”
Bridging the ‘invisibility gap’ for graduates
To reach the President’s goal of 1.6 million opportunities, Moola advocates for ‘finishing schools’: 16-week intensive programmes that take theoretical graduates and make them industry-ready for firms like Amazon and Google. He argues that funding the final 10% of a graduate’s journey protects the previous 90% of the investment made in their basic education.
A ‘skills compact’ for global competitiveness
Finally, Moola proposes tax incentives for South African corporates that ‘loan’ senior engineers to act as mentors for national digital programmes. This Mentorship-as-a-Service model aims to transform the workforce from tool-users into tool-makers who can build the next generation of AI infrastructure.
