How this woman is solving SA’s unemployment by teaching mine workers to operate heavy machinery

South Africa has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. The country’s unemployment rate stands at 34.5% while the number of unemployed totals 7.921 million people, according to Reuters. How this woman is solving SA’s unemployment by teaching mine workers to operate heavy machinery

Spurred by the unemployment rate in South Africa, Maggie Moila decided to venture into entrepreneurship by providing skills training and financial literacy. In this regard, she started Fundza Training Institute in 2015 to train mine workers on how to operate heavy machinery and also provide financial literacy education.

Moila has experience working for major companies like Anglo-American’s Mogalakwena mine and the Ivanplats mine in South Africa’s Limpopo Province. However, her entrepreneurship journey started with teaching financial literacy.

Moila started as a registered debt counselor after realizing that many of the youth in South Africa had little or no financial literacy education. As such, they were exposed to poor and risky financial decisions that compromised their finances.

She started training and educating local communities on how to manage and invest their finances, including Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) on business start-ups and mentoring, according to IOL.

She later expanded the accreditation for her training institute into lifting machines, earth-moving machines, and first aid. This was after she noticed many people, particularly, the youth, do not have the requisite skills to be employed in the mining field. She, therefore, decided to open a training center to offer them those skills.

By deciding to venture into providing skills to unskilled youth to go into mining, Moila was venturing into a territory dominated by white males.

“Being a black woman in a white male-dominated industry, I had to work 10 times harder, just to be recognized and taken into consideration, but I saw it as a motivation,” she told IOL.

According to the outlet, she trains people on how to operate earth-moving machines like excavators and tipper tracks, and lift machinery like telescopic boom handlers and mobile elevated platform operators. She also helps with crane operation, first aid and firefighting.