South Africa’s ICT sector is increasingly prioritising soft skills over technical expertise, leading to skills gaps and greater reliance on outsourced services. To remain competitive and drive innovation, the industry must restore technical mastery as the foundation of education, hiring and leadership, writes Rennie Naidoo, IS professor and research director at the Wits School of Business Sciences.
ICT was once a field where deep technical expertise reigned supreme. Today, the industry is shifting. Soft skills like communication and teamwork are increasingly treated as more important than technical mastery.
This fits well with modern corporate narratives about agility and collaboration. But beneath the surface, the imbalance raises a fundamental question: Are we prioritising the ability to talk about problems over the ability to solve them?
Soft skills matter. There is no debate about that. A cybersecurity specialist who cannot articulate risks to executives is only half as effective as one who can. A software engineer who cannot work within a cross-functional team will struggle in a modern development environment.
But somewhere along the way, the balance has tipped too far. Technical mastery, the backbone of ICT, has been sidelined.
In both my academic research and industry advisory work, I’ve seen how the absence of this balance can diminish the impact of technically gifted professionals, not because they lack soft skills but because technical depth is too often undervalued.
The erosion of technical foundations
Nowhere is this imbalance more evident than in education. South Africa’s struggling school system already produces too few graduates with strong foundations in mathematics, science, and problem-solving skills that are essential for ICT careers.
At the same time, trade unions and cadre deployment have contributed to the decline of education quality, shielding underperforming teachers from accountability and prioritising political loyalty over merit. This has eroded technical competence in critical Stem fields.
Rather than addressing this foundational skills gap, many resource-constrained universities are doubling down on soft skills-heavy curricula, prioritising leadership, teamwork, communication and emotional intelligence, often at the expense of rigorous technical education.
This shift runs deeper than just course content.
Some critics argue that academia is shifting its focus from technical excellence to social considerations like identity politics, where factors such as gender, race and political ideology sometimes take precedence over competence.
Grade inflation and an increasing focus on learner self-esteem over competence mean that technical rigour is no longer the primary metric for academic success.
Many graduates enter the workforce unprepared for the realities of industry, lacking the problem-solving ability and technical depth required for complex roles in cybersecurity, software engineering and AI. As industry hiring trends increasingly favour well-rounded candidates, universities are expanding soft-skill-focused programmes, arguably at the expense of technical depth.
This risks creating a self-reinforcing cycle. As employers begin to place more value on soft skills, there is a risk that universities will tend to produce more graduates who are socially adept but technically underprepared.
Moreover, they may tend to hire faculty who mirror those same priorities, academics who excel at drama and small talk, often at the expense of deep subject-matter expertise.
When hiring trends undermine expertise
The shift towards soft skills is not just an academic issue. It is deeply entrenched in industry hiring practices as well.
Recruitment firms, HR professionals and IT line managers, many of whom are far removed from the technical intricacies of ICT, are increasingly prioritising cultural fit and people skills over deep expertise.
The result? An industry that is becoming better at presenting ideas than executing them. As in-house technical depth erodes, companies are forced to outsource critical ICT functions.
Cybersecurity, AI development and software engineering projects are being handed over to third-party vendors, not because outsourcing is inherently better, but because internal teams lack the expertise to manage complex tasks.
Over time, this creates an industry increasingly dependent on external offshore service providers and foreign experts, weakening in-house innovation capacity and slowing local problem-solving.
Ironically, this soft skills-first mindset emerges at a time when deep technical skills have never been more essential. The rapid pace of digital transformation means that expertise in areas like cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity is constantly evolving.
Yet, the soft skills movement suggests that technical expertise is a static foundation, something secondary to interpersonal relationships. But technical mastery is not an optional extra. It is the foundation upon which everything else is built.
The social capital trap
This growing preference for social networking, influence and communication is part of a broader trend sociologists describe as the rise of social capital over technical capital. In simple terms, career success is becoming less about what you know and more about how well you fit into a group dynamic.
While social capital has its place, particularly in leadership, it is no substitute for deep technical knowledge. An overreliance on it leads to a system where symbolic competence (the ability to present well, communicate effectively and build relationships) outweighs substantive technical ability.
This ultimately weakens the ICT sector, as critical roles are filled by individuals who can navigate office politics but struggle with technical problem-solving. Notwithstanding, South Africa’s ICT skills crisis is not accidental. It is the result of decades of social engineering.
Under apartheid, education systems were deliberately designed to exclude most of the population from technical and scientific disciplines, creating generational gaps in Stem expertise. Despite efforts to reverse these effects, Stem education remains weak, producing too few graduates with the deep technical skills needed to drive the country’s digital economy forward.
Today, a new form of social engineering is emerging not from state policy, but from corporate hiring biases.
As businesses increasingly favour soft skills, cultural fit and interpersonal ability over technical mastery, they are inadvertently engineering a workforce that excels at soft skills but lacks the technical depth to drive real innovation.
The result? A growing reliance on international companies and foreign expertise for critical ICT functions such as cybersecurity, AI development and software engineering. Instead of developing a strong local talent pipeline, South Africa remains dependent on external vendors, draining economic value and limiting technological sovereignty.
This is not to say soft skills should be discarded. The real issue is their overcorrection, which elevates them above technical expertise.
The dual pathway to ICT excellence
ICT leaders must recognise the danger of this imbalance and course correct. A well-functioning technology team requires both technical mastery and strong soft skills, but not one at the expense of the other.
Hiring and promotion decisions must prioritise deep technical expertise first, ensuring that critical ICT roles are filled by those with the knowledge and problem-solving ability to drive digital innovation, strengthen cybersecurity and sustain the complex IT operations that keep businesses running reliably.
At the same time, mentorship programmes and leadership training should help technically strong professionals develop the soft skills needed to communicate and collaborate effectively.
The most effective ICT leaders are those who understand the technology at its core and can translate that understanding into real value, driving innovation, efficiency and competitive advantage. Simply being a good communicator or a strong team player is not enough.
This imbalance is particularly perilous in an era defined by rapid advances in AI and automation. Many ICT professionals mistakenly assume that soft skills will be the safest currency in the age of intelligent machines.
But this view overlooks a critical truth. As AI systems become more capable, the demand for deep technical understanding will only intensify. Those who can build, interpret and refine these technologies will be more valuable than ever.
In the coming wave of AI-led transformation, it won’t be soft skills on their own that future-proof careers. It will be the powerful combination of hard-won technical depth and soft skills that will deliver results.
