Denel group CEO Riaz Saloojee has reaffirmed his company's commitment to education and skills development. He was delivering the keynote address at the Denel Dynamics Young Achievers Awards in Centurion on Friday.

"One of the key challenges facing the country is: how do we educate our people?" he said. "From the Denel perspective, we have a very clear and well-defined interest in education. We are a company in one of the most cutting-edge and competitive industries in the world."

The Young Achievers Awards recognise outstanding students from three levels of education supported by Denel Dynamics. These are the sponsored Saturday schools for maths and science with active assistence by the company, which benefit pupils at the Steve Tshwete and Olivienhoutbosch high schools, university students who have received bursaries from Denel Dynamics, and the company's in-house interns.

"For a country with such a small proportion of its GDP [gross domestic product] devoted to defence, our country is certainly punching above its weight [in defence technology]. It shows the progress South Africa has made on the technology front," he highlighted. "Denel is increasingly being seen as a centre of excellence."

To maintain this success, Denel Dynamics has, he pointed out, initiatives to attract students and trainees. "Dynamics would not be on the cutting edge of technology if it was not for you, the people," he told the attendees of the function. "One of Denel's objectives is to promote engineering as a career choice for women."

Saloojee referred to the fact that other Denel group companies run similar programmes with similar levels of success. "I am quite confident we'll meet the challenges of the future as far as education and engineering are concerned."

At the same function, Denel group chairperson Zoli Kunene affirmed that "[w]e are succeeding in attracting to our company the brightest young minds. We are looking forward to offering an increasing number of bursaries to the graduates of this [Saturday school] programme."