Recap
4IR Research Chair Symposium + Expo 2026
KAYISE IT at the MICT SETA and Cape Peninsula University of Technology programme on research, skills, and the fourth industrial revolution.
On 29 May 2026, KAYISE IT was honoured to attend the 4IR Research Chair Symposium + Expo 2026, convened with MICT SETA and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).
The programme brought research, skills delivery, and industry into one room. That is the work South Africa has to get right if the fourth industrial revolution is going to produce jobs, not only slides: a SETA that funds training, a university that holds a research chair, and partners who can turn both into workplace capability.
What this symposium is for
MICT SETA’s mandate is the media, information, and communication technologies sector — the pipeline of people who will build, secure, and run digital systems. CPUT’s 4IR Research Chair is there to ask what that sector actually needs from universities, and to test the answers in public.
The expo sits beside the symposium for a reason. Talks without a floor of working technology stay theoretical. A floor of technology without a skills story stays a trade show. This format is meant to hold both: the panel on stage, and the partners who have to employ, host, or train the next cohort.
On the floor
The hall was set as a demonstration of that brief. The central screen and side banners carried a single identity — 4IR Research Chair, Symposium + Expo, 2026 — with MICT SETA and CPUT on the programme, and industry marks along the base. A panel sat in discussion under that identity while the hall watched.
For a company that trains young people in digital skills, this is not a distant policy event. It is the upstream conversation about what internships, learnerships, and 4IR programmes must be ready to deliver.
Why KAYISE IT was there
KAYISE IT runs as a technology business that also develops South African youth: software and web delivery on one side of the house; internships, SETA-aligned programmes, and 4IR skills training on the other. Those two sides only make sense together. A learner who never touches a live system is not ready for work. A company that never trains is not building the sector it sells into.
Days like this are where those relationships are kept in view — with MICT SETA, with universities, and with employers who will take people on after the classroom.
What we take back
The symposium does not replace the work of placing learners or writing curriculum. It does set the bar. Research has to reach training. Training has to reach a workplace. SETAs, universities, and delivery partners have to sit in the same conversation, or the pipeline breaks between them.
That is the standard we hold our own programmes to. If you are a college, a SETA partner, or an employer looking for a training host that already works this way, speak to us. You can also see the 4IR and ICT training we deliver, and the rest of our notes from the field.