Esri South Africa College

As digital transformation continues to drive change around the world, location intelligence is emerging as a principal driver for maximising value. These forces are driving up demand in the geospatial industry, and geospatial practitioners are among the critical skill sets required in South Africa. This demand has been gradually increasing, as evidenced by previous years' National List of High Demand Occupations. Many people working in the industry, however, lacked and continue to lack the qualifications required by the South African Geomatics Council (SAGC) to practice as registered practitioners.

Esri South Africa College was founded to enable individuals to achieve a qualification and reskill themselves to align with the latest technology trends. Our passion is geography, and our philosophy is to encourage lifelong learning in the geospatial industry. Esri South Africa College provides an opportunity for professionals to register as geomatics practitioners and advance the role of geospatial technologies in the region.

Our goal is to transform the country's geospatial landscape by providing our community with an academic model that allows them to build a qualification from individual modules, allowing students to study on their own time and at their own pace.

Our mission is to provide a platform for education that:

• Provides flexible learning choices
• Builds capacity in the GISc industry
• Open learning through recognition of prior learning (RPL)
• Enables individuals to register with a professional body

Esri South Africa College includes as part of its offering, access to technology-based courses, that can lead to international certification. We offer short learning programmes such as the NQF Level 5 Mining Certificate and other industry focussed certificates. 

In addition, the Diploma in GISc&T is the only GISc programme that caters to the unique needs of professional learners. The GISc&T programme, which is based on the HEQF NQF Level 6, was developed in 2016 in accordance with the academic framework for Geographic Information Science (GISc) technicians as required by the SAGC under Act 19 of 2013.

Esri South Africa College provides unique learning options for individuals who would not otherwise be able to attend a university for full-time studies. It is intended for individuals who are working and have limited study time and provides a stepping-stone to further qualifications. We chose to focus on spatial literacy to dedicate all our resources to perfecting this product in an effort to provide our customers with cost-effective continuous professional development.

We are working with Esri experts in academia and our industry partners to ensure high-quality, tailored, and market-focused solutions. With so many learning choices, our customers can expect to gain access to an unlimited amount of knowledge.