Companies are investing heavily in workplace skills development, but the growing demand for continuous learning is creating another challenge: producing training material quickly enough to keep up.
The global corporate e-learning market was valued at US$104.3 billion, approximately R1.66 trillion, in 2024 and is forecast to reach US$335 billion, or R5.34 trillion, by 2030, according to Grand View Research.
That represents compound annual growth of 21.7%, driven in part by digital transformation and the growing need to upskill employees.
South Africa is experiencing a similar shift.
The country’s corporate education and skills development market was estimated at US$2.055 billion, approximately R32.8 billion, in 2025 and is forecast to reach US$3.374 billion, or R53.8 billion, by 2031.
Self-paced digital learning is expected to record the strongest growth in learner volumes.
Billions already flowing into skills development
Official figures also show the scale of South Africa’s investment in workforce development.
The country collected R24.1 billion through the Skills Development Levy in 2024/25.
That was an increase of 7.8% in a single year and 138.8% since 2011/12.
Some R19.3 billion of the latest annual total was allocated to SETAs.
But as organisations require more frequent training, the traditional process used to produce learning material is coming under pressure.
“Companies have traditionally relied on their L&D and instructional design teams to turn subject expertise into structured learning,” says Mduduzi Sibisi, Product Head at New Leaf Technologies. “But the people who possess that knowledge are distributed throughout the organisation. They could be engineers, sales managers, compliance specialists, operations teams or someone with 30 years of institutional knowledge who is about to retire.”
The knowledge exists, but turning it into training takes time
Traditionally, subject-matter experts provide their knowledge to learning and development teams, which then convert that information into structured training.
That process can take days or weeks.
The challenge becomes greater when the people holding valuable knowledge are spread across different parts of an organisation.
It is this gap between possessing the expertise and turning it into usable training that a new generation of learning technology is seeking to address.
Global learning technology company Articulate has launched Frontline, an AI-powered platform designed to allow employees and subject-matter experts outside traditional training roles to create learning content themselves.
New Leaf Technologies, one of three Articulate distributors in Africa and its only certified training partner on the continent, is introducing and supporting the platform across African markets.
Turning existing company knowledge into training
Instead of beginning with a blank page, employees can provide Frontline with material they already have, including documents, presentations, conversations and videos.
They then describe what employees need to learn.
AI helps determine learning objectives and recommends suitable training assets.
The same source material can then be used to generate a coordinated training kit, including short courses, training decks, scenarios, quizzes and other learning resources.
Users are also able to refine the material according to specific requirements, including the amount of time employees have available for training, before distributing it.
Does AI mean replacing L&D teams?
Sibisi says allowing more employees to create training material isn’t intended to remove specialist learning and development teams.
“This isn’t about replacing L&D professionals with AI. It is about expanding their reach,” he says. “If people closest to the knowledge can deal with more immediate and straightforward training requirements themselves, specialist L&D teams can concentrate their expertise on the more complex, strategic learning challenges where they add the greatest value.”
The approach also addresses knowledge retention within organisations.
Experienced employees can play a more direct role in converting their expertise into reusable training material before that institutional knowledge leaves the business.
Measuring whether employees are learning
Once training has been distributed, organisations can track participation and completion.
They can also measure quiz and knowledge-check results and individual learner performance.
This adds measurement to workplace training that might previously have been distributed as a PowerPoint presentation, Word document or email attachment.
“For African businesses, where skills development is already a major investment, the opportunity is significant,” says Sibisi. “The next evolution of workplace learning isn’t simply putting more courses online. It’s making it possible for knowledge to become learning wherever that knowledge sits in the organisation, and doing it at the speed at which businesses now need to operate.”
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