A South African aviation expert has challenged the industry in her country to set up better plans and programmes in order to inspire more youth – especially young men and women from underprivileged communities – to take up the aviation and aerospace industries as an achievable career.
Having pivoted into the unmanned aviation space around 2017, Kim James, the director of South African drone services company UAV Aerial Works, has been in the trenches fighting to get more young women and young people from marginalised communities inducted into the industry.
Last week, James was part of a panel discussing the challenges faced by the less privileged young people trying to enter the aviation industry, at the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO) Next Generation of Aviation Professionals Global Summit in Durban.
The discussion under the theme Breaking Barriers to Aviation Careers: Funding, Inclusion and Access Solutions, and aside from James, comprised of experts from across manned and unmanned aviation, including Captain Zoya Agarwal, senior commander at Air India and a UN Women Advocate and Natalie Randolph, acting director of Asia Pacific at the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
James shared that a key limiting factor was the lack of planned, purposeful, and bespoke funding programmes.
While funding models do exist, Kim opined that they do not result in work-ready candidates, especially in the unmanned aviation space, where a common misconception that attaining a drone pilot licence is enough to secure one’s future in the industry.
And James should know; she is one of the captains at a thriving drone-based solutions provider, that has kept expanding its portfolio of services offered, in response to the demands of the market.
UAV Aerial Works has a security wing, called Drone Guards, which offers drone technology as part of the solutions for the security industry.
And the one big lesson James learnt with Drone Guards was that only a person with intimate knowledge of the security industry would know what to look for when put behind the controls of a drone.
It is so much more than just being able to fly a drone; one has to know how to collect security data, how to carry out effective patrols and reconnaissance missions; and how to keep the ground-based cavalry updated when pursuing suspects.
And because there was a shortage of people with such skills, Aerial Works then opened a drone academy, where they equipped trainees with all the skills they need to be successful in providing drone-based security services.
James and other stakeholders are fighting against situations where drone programmes designed for marginalized groups are inadequately funded, and up not helping the beneficiaries with employment.
At the panel, James suggested that – with unmanned aviation technology permeating almost every facet of industrial operations, it was high time that education authorities in the country caught up and reform the system to include technology studies from a young age.
She also advocated for the assessment of young people who fail to complete their education, so they can be considered non-certified industry roles to utilise their prior training.
“We employ youth, which in our context would be aged between eighteen to 34, and 50 percent of all of our candidates that apply for any of our jobs either do not have a driver's licence or cannot drive, which means I cannot hire them,” James said.
Her sentiments were echoed by Thobile Masooa, the human resources executive at the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA), who expressed regret that the uptake of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects remains low in the targeted communities.
Teacher shortages and a lack of infrastructure was a hindrance to SEM subject offerings in rural schools, she added.
Masooa’s insights arrived at the backdrop of a worrying report from the Department of Basic Education, which in May said there were about 464 schools in South Africa that had stopped teaching Mathematics to students.
“If you look at our government’s National Fund scheme (NSFAS), it sponsors mostly students who are in public universities, and some of our aviation training takes place in the private sector,” said Masooa.
Against this background, Masooa announced that SACAA has collaborated with the industry stakeholders to launch a programme aimed at integrating aviation qualifications into the National Qualifications Framework, where a licence would be comparable to a bachelor's qualification.
Ellah Wafula, an aircraft maintenance engineer from the Association for Women in Aviation (AWAM) in Kenya, was also part of the panel and she highlighted the significant financial barrier for young people looking to enter into aviation.
She noted that the high cost of aviation courses makes them inaccessible to many passionate and talented individuals who aspire to join the field, before lobbying for funded African pathways to be created, to prevent losing a generation of talented, skilled, and passionate innovators who lack access.
She also called for girls to get early exposure to the industry and structured mentorship.
The event was hosted by ICAO in collaboration with the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA).