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ADVERTORIAL

Rudzani Livhia

SAENA BOTANY

According to tradingeconomics.com, the agriculture sector accounts for 5.088% of the
formally employed population of South Africa. With the partial “downing of tools” across
the country during the national lockdown, there has been an outcry at the number of job
losses and business closures. Our industry is not immune and an important constituent
sits at home, feeling forgotten and dejected: the next generation of green industry
practitioners.

oward the end of 2019, Saena Botany required to enter their careers with a sentiments. Mashilo Ramolesane’s
partnered with the horticulture healthy head start. response to her current state of mind
Tdepartments at the Tshwane was particularly discouraging: “Every year
comes along with its challenges, and as
University of Technology and Durban The students kicked 2020 off with a usual I fight to overcome throughout, even
University of Technology to provide bang, diving enthusiastically into their though sometimes I fail. What's happening
their third year students with practical, selfproclaimed passion for the industry now has never crossed my mind. The
excitement of being a final year student
industryrelated training and experience and commitment to their role and has now gone since everything is stuck”.
for their Horticulture and Landscape purpose in it. They attended an induction
Technology National Diploma for the year workshop at Saena during which words No one was ready
2020. This was not only to benefit the such as “abundance” and “hope” were
students but also to allow the departments written in their manifestos. They signed We have seen evidence of the advancement
to accommodate placements for a large their first-ever employment contracts and and application of technology in our field
number of students, which has increased were determined to finish strong - until but what we have not, to a large extent,
accounted for is the transfer of skills in
significantly (113%) over the last three “unprecedented times” put a spectacularly the event of a crisis as debilitating as this
abrupt halt on their futures.
years. Fifteen DUT and TUT students are one. To a degree, we can say our industry
currently hosted by Saena Botany in a At the beginning of July, we took time to is primitive in this instance. What is the
work-integrated learnership programme interview the students to get a sense of solution? Where do we go from here?
what they made of the current state of
which is geared not only to give them affairs, and their language had changed Our experience during the national
entry-level work experience but also to significantly from the high-spiritedrhetoric lockdown is indicative of how crucial
empower them with the necessary skills at the beginning of the year to dour digital literacy and connectivity are to
maintaining our economy and even

6 Landscape SA • Issue 95 2020