Not only will the IDC enhance the local business climate and create jobs, the content and applications created by the Tshwane IDC will help with vocational skills transfer and improve local STEM education. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality applications improve education and successfully address the issues of illiteracy and language barriers by showing rather than telling.

This IDC is a central part of Tshwane’s long term plan, Tshwane Vision 2055, to “break the cycle of generational poverty, inequality, and underdevelopment” as well as to enhance the local business and investment climate in South Africa’s capital city.

Tshwane’s forward-looking approach, Executive Mayor Ramokgopa’s strong commitment to bring an IDC to Tshwane, and EON Reality’s seventeen-year relationship with local VR company; the Naledi3d Factory, made Tshwane a natural choice for EON Reality’s first IDC in Continental Africa. With the global Augmented and Virtual Reality markets expected to reach 150 billion dollars, content creation has to expand to keep up with local and global consumer’s needs. This new IDC will establish a local AR and VR ecosystem in Tshwane and its Entrepreneur School that will help to develop skilled local resources. This hands on educational approach helps all students perform better in the classroom by making learning more engaging, improving retention, and building experiences to be recalled rather than memorising facts.

“Virtual Reality based knowledge transfer will be crucial to the future of education in South Africa, particularly in Tshwane. As a Capital City, Tshwane is often confronted with difficult policy choices given the limited financial resources and competing service delivery needs. To this end, the City has taken a policy position to prioritise investments linked to education and development of young people. This explains our quest for state of the art technologies that assists the City to ignite excellence when delivering services. The Interactive Digital Centre will propel vocational skills training and development to unprecedented levels in South Africa,” concludes Dumisani Otumile, Group Chief Information Officer for the City of Tshwane.

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