On 31 October 2025, Wits Commercial Enterprise (WCE) Pty Ltd joined Absa in celebrating the graduation of the interns of the Nwando programme. The ceremony, held at Absa’s headquarters, marked the successful completion of a 12 month programme aimed at building scarce and critical skills in data science, geo-spatial analysis, climate analytics, AI, robotics, and cloud technologies.

As Absa’s implementation partner, WCE provided full programme management from intern recruitment and contracting to academic alignment, financial administration, and monthly monitoring. Through WCE, Absa accessed the research excellence of both Wits University and the University of Johannesburg, ensuring the programme was academically robust and industry-relevant. Interns also completed two Wits-certified online courses i.e. Business Communication Skills and The Digital Transformation Lifecycle. These strengthened their workplace readiness and professional competencies.

The programme was guided by two leading academics: Prof. Turgay Celik (Wits) and Prof. Charis Harley (UJ). Their weekly supervision and deep subject expertise enabled interns to produce research across four strategic themes: Biometrics, AI in Financial Services, Cloud & Tech Infrastructure, and Data & Climate Analytics. Their mentorship ensured strong theoretical grounding and practical, deployable outputs aligned with Absa’s next-generation operations.

With much excitement and pride, the interns showcased their research outputs in a series of presentations from each group. This was a unique display as it showed the hard work the interns had put into developing their ideas through the sound mentorship and guidance of the Academic team. In a significant demonstration of the programme’s success, Absa announced at the end of the event that all interns would be absorbed on 12-month contracts. This outcome reflects both the high calibre of the interns and the value generated through the collaborative partnership with WCE.

As the projected was culminated, it was a reflective moment for all the stakeholders. The Absa–Nwando internship programme stands as a model for how academia and industry can work together to build South Africa’s future talent pipeline. WCE remains committed to strengthening such partnerships and expanding opportunities that elevate youth employment and innovation across sectors.