Samsung has delivered yet more successful Solve for Tomorrow (SFT) Design Thinking Workshops for 2026, with a group of brilliant learners from various public schools across South Africa.
The May 8 to June 15 workshops were held at central venues in the provinces where the 2026 Top 20 finalist schools are based.
North West led the pack with four finalist schools, followed by Limpopo and the Free State with three each. Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and Mpumalanga each had two finalist schools, while the Eastern Cape and Northern Cape each had one.
From classroom ideas to community impact
The Samsung SFT Design Thinking Workshops are highly collaborative and human-centric problem-solving sessions.
They are structured around a hands-on community-focused problem-solving approach that seeks to teach participating grade 10 and 11 learners to empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test.
This year’s competition is driven by two themes. The first is Social Change through Sports and Technology, which ensures the power of sport is recognised as a unifying force in South Africa.
The second is Environmental Sustainability via Technology, which encourages young people from different schools to develop tech-driven solutions that protect natural resources, promote renewable energy and support sustainable living.
Beyond the competition, these themes are intended to build skills essential for the country’s Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) agenda — including critical thinking, design thinking and collaborative problem-solving.
This exciting 2026 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-based competition is open to all public schools, including quintile 5. It seeks to foster innovation among high school learners from underprivileged backgrounds.
For Samsung, this year’s iteration demonstrates a major shift, ensuring that the competition is more inclusive and nationally representative and that there’s broader participation from public schools across the country.
Lefa Makgato, corporate social responsibility manager for Samsung SA, says Samsung is pleased with how this year’s workshops have run, and with the impact that Samsung mentors in collaboration with educators had on the lives of learners.
These workshops have now managed to move the school learners’ minds beyond theoretical knowledge
— Lefa Makgato, Samsung SA corporate social responsibility manager
“These Design Thinking Workshops are a critical stage of this STEM-based competition. And importantly, these workshops have now managed to move the school learners’ minds beyond theoretical knowledge — giving them the hands-on experience they need for the next, prototype-building stage of the competition," she says.
“The learners who participated in these workshops will now be able to use STEM principles they have learnt to address real-world community challenges, such as environmental sustainability,” Makgato says.
Preparing tomorrow’s innovators
The designated period of the Samsung SFT Design Thinking Workshops is used to breakdown key elements and core objectives of the competition, including:
- Human-Centred Design: Teaching teams to approach challenges from the end-user’s perspective, prioritising empathy to design functional solutions.
- The Prototype Development Element of the SFT Competition: Where learners are guided through moving from a conceptual idea to creating tangible paper or digital prototypes.
- Skills Enhancement Part of Design Thinking Workshops: Which encourages and fosters the need for learners to master the art of collaboration, creative brainstorming, critical thinking and effective communication.
Following the workshops, the learners will now, under the guidance of their teachers and mentors, embark on the next phase of research and prototype development in preparation for the competition’s finale.
Investing in SA’s future through STEM
At the final stage, scheduled for later this year, the teams will present their prototypes to a panel of judges.
For Samsung, this SFT competition has — since 2023 when it was launched in South Africa — been challenging public school learners to dream, develop and build real-world solutions to enact positive social change.
And, at every level of the competition, public school learners have the opportunity to gain invaluable STEM skills, allowing them to give back to their schools and communities while also creating lasting friendships along the way.
“As Samsung, we strongly believe that this SFT initiative, and in particular these Design Thinking Workshops, which equip learners with critical STEM-based and interpersonal skills, directly support South Africa’s national educational and transformation goals, particularly in fostering 4IR skills, critical thinking and equitable access to opportunities,” says Makgato.
“And we are convinced that our partnership with the department of basic education in this competition highlights and reaffirms a shared conviction that investing in youth, particularly through technology, is crucial for South Africa’s sustainable future economic growth and social transformation.”
This article was sponsored by Samsung.
