Source: New skills audit policy to align education with industry needs – herald
Sikhulekelani Moyo, sikhu.moyo@chronicle.co.zw
THE Ministry of Skills, Audit and Development has positioned skills development and human capital planning as a cornerstone of Zimbabwe’s push towards attaining upper-middle-income economy status by 2030, with a new national policy currently undergoing stakeholder validation.
In an interview on the sidelines of the ongoing 66th edition of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) on Thursday, Minister of Skills Audit and Development Dr Jenfan Muswere outlined his ministry’s mandate to reverse decades of skills flight and reconfigure the country’s labour force to meet the evolving demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
From a supply driven to a demand driven skills framework, Dr Muswere said the ministry is carrying out continuous skills audits across all sectors of the economy to guide evidence based human resources planning.
The audits will inform the formulation of a new Skills Audit and Development Policy, which is currently being subjected to validation workshops nationwide.
“For too long our institutions of higher and tertiary education, schools and vocational training centres have focused on a supply-driven model. This has created both a glut and deficiencies within the labour market. The remodelling architecture must focus on a demand-driven, skilled workforce — both in managerial leadership and technical skills,” he said.
Linking the issue of skills development to the country’s resource endowment, Dr Muswere highlighted the disconnect between Zimbabwe’s natural resource wealth and the skills required to unlock value from those resources. He cited the tobacco industry, where the country produces more than 350 million metric tonnes annually but remains limited in value addition capacity.
“We are exporting jobs and losing taxes across the value chains because production is not linked to secondary and tertiary industries. The same applies to cotton. We produce it, yet we import the bulk of our clothes,” said Dr Muswere.
He cited further examples, including the existence of phosphate deposits alongside continued fertiliser imports, the availability of iron ore and limestone against the stalled operations at Zisco Steel, and the ongoing importation of motor vehicles, railway stock and machinery despite the presence of engineering training programmes.
“Do we have the correct curriculum for our engineers to design and develop a motor vehicle? Can our engineers develop a helicopter? Can they produce machinery to mine our deposits? What you import is what you do not know how to produce.”
A key pillar of the ministry’s strategy, according to Dr Muswere, is to harness skills within the diaspora. He said Zimbabwe has experienced “a lot of skills flight over the past decades” and that the ministry is now focused on reversing the trend.
“How best to bring back medical expertise that is in the diaspora? How best can we bring back agricultural experts, breeders, and telecoms experts so our industry is not only based on consumerisation but on designers and engineers as original equipment manufacturers?”
The objective, he said, is to build intellectual capacity that enables the country to design, produce and maintain its own technologies, rather than relying predominantly on imports.
He said this approach includes leveraging artificial intelligence, information and communication technology models and software development to position Zimbabwe as a “fully fledged digital economy.”
Dr Muswere stressed that production, productivity and competitiveness are fundamentally underpinned by human resources, which he described as “the key catalyst” for the achievement of Vision 2030.
He called for stronger coordination between the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education and sectors responsible for managing natural resources in order to address persistent skills gaps.
He also drew comparisons with countries such as Israel, which exports food despite operating in desert conditions, to illustrate the central role of intellectual capacity in driving agricultural transformation and ensuring food security.
“The hegemony of the West is mainly intellectual capacity, which is superior to produce weaponry in order to intimidate other nations. The whole aspect about the production productivity matrix is based on your capacity to think,” said Dr Muswere.
Referencing pre colonial iron smelting practices and Zisco Steel’s former production capacity of one million metric tonnes of steel products, Dr Muswere questioned the current skills deficiency in the sector.
“Before colonisation, Zimbabweans had an intellectual capacity to produce steel. Where did we go wrong from converting from those cupola furnaces to upgrade to blast furnaces? Blast furnace number four — we should reverse engineer it, come up with new models and technologies,” he added.
The ministry’s mandate, he concluded, is to maximise human capital development through upskilling, reskilling and skilling in order to transition the economy from primary production to secondary industry, reduce import dependency, and enhance food, health and economic security.
“All these aspects are what we are fully charged to maximise — human capital development to grow the nation,” Dr Muswere said.
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