AFRICAN SPEAKER BUREAU | CURATED FOR INVESTEC
What a Promaths Learner Carries Into the Room
Khaya Dlanga has spoken to school learners for Investec before. This proposal builds on that relationship for the next Promaths Awards in January: an address about the rooms a distinction in mathematics and science will open, and the part of themselves those rooms will need.
Learners who reach a Promaths awards evening have already proved they can master difficult material. The next test arrives quickly. A bursary panel asks them to explain why they deserve the investment. A lecture hall surrounds them with classmates from very different schools. A first employer asks what they see that others miss. Khaya speaks to that moment. He tells the learners how a boy from the rural Eastern Cape walked into some of the largest brands on the continent without the credentials the people around him held, and how the part of his life he was tempted to hide became the source of his best work. His first Cannes Gold Lion, shared with Ntsikelelo Nukwa, came from that childhood. He does not present himself as an expert in mathematics or science, and the address never suggests that a story replaces a qualification. He shows the learners what their discipline makes possible, and he names what they will need alongside it: the confidence to speak from their own experience, the curiosity to keep asking, and the willingness to back an idea before everyone in the room agrees. Every version of the address is written for the audience in front of him. Seventy per cent of the talk stays constant, and thirty per cent is built with the organisers around the learners, teachers and families in the hall that year.
About this collection
Promaths began in Dobsonville, Soweto, in 2005, as a partnership between Investec and the Kutlwanong Centre for Maths, Science and Technology. Today it reaches more than 8,000 learners a year across 19 centres, and its learners have earned about 13,000 distinctions in mathematics and physical science. The awards evening honours that work. Learners cross the stage, parents and teachers watch years of Saturday classes turn into a result, and the Grade 11 learners in the hall see what the coming year asks of them. A guest voice on that evening has one job: It sends the learners home with a question worth carrying into university, a bursary interview or a first job, and it does so without taking the evening away from them. Khaya Dlanga grew up in the rural Eastern Cape and went on to lead marketing for some of the largest brands on the continent. He built his first Cannes Gold Lion on an idea from his own childhood. His message to young people is direct: don't leave where you come from behind when it comes to your work. For learners who have earned their place through mathematics and science, that message completes the distinction. The marks open the door. What they bring from home, from their community and from the long road to this result is what makes them valuable once they are inside. Investec describes itself as Out of the Ordinary and states its purpose as creating enduring worth. Promaths shows that purpose in people: the learner who arrives at a centre on a Saturday morning and leaves, years later, with a distinction and a choice of careers.
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