Bridging skills demand and supply in South Africa: The role of public and private intermediaries (original) (raw)
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Bridging skills: demand and supply in South Africa: the role of intermediary organisations
2016
The research was conducted under the Labour Market Intelligence Partnership, a research consortium led by the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa, and funded by the Department of Higher Education and Training. We acknowledge a large team of researchers who participated in the data-gathering and analysis process, as well as all of those who participated in the case studies.
2016
College. All were instrumental in encouraging me to persevere in pursuit of my goal. To my husband Roland Jackson and son Clinton Jackson, I thank you both for a lifetime of unwavering love, inspiration, wisdom and support. Nicholas Rush Smith, your patience and thorough feedback in the quest for academic excellence encourages me to always dig deep in appreciation of rigorous scholarship. Thank you for thoughtful counsel as my thesis advisor and your leadership as an Africanist. Jeffrey Kucik, Jean Krasno and Johanna Ureña, your insight and encouragement allowed me to persist and complete the journey. I am forever grateful to Vincent Boudreau, Karen Witherspoon and Andrzej Krakowski, who were there at the beginning and remained in my corner. To Lynn Appelbaum and Jerry Carlson, I sincerely appreciate your guidance and flexibility, which allowed me to complete coursework and tackle research projects amidst CCNY Media & Communications Arts teaching responsibilities. Know that I will bring a heightened understanding of international relations and globalization to the classroom, expanding the bandwidth of future information, communications and technology professionals. Je salue l'Institut Français: Alliance Française et le City University of New York Graduate Centre; merci tout spécialement au professeur Robert Diamond. Et à ma meilleure amie pour toujours Alicia Evans, merci pour la paix et la lumière au milieu de la lutte.
2015
Training and development are important in ensuring that the goals of an organisation (and nation) become a reality. However, since depending on business to voluntarily address the skills agenda will not necessarily achieve the desired results, governments have to take responsibility and aggressively drive the training and development agenda. South Africa has enacted various legislations to address the skills development agenda, one such being the Skills Development Act which mandated the establishment of Sector Education and Training Authorities. This paper explored the effectives of one, namely, the Fibre Processing and Manufacturing Sector Education and Training Authority, in addressing the skills shortage in South Africa, by surveying a non-probability sample of training managers, SETA officials and employees from the Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries based in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. It became evident that: the Performance Management and Development System ...
Conceptualising regional skills ecosystems: Reflections on four African cases
International Journal of Training and Development, 2021
In this article we address the debate on regional skills formation systems in Africa. We draw on the social ecosystems model (SEM) developed by Hodgson and Spours to analyse data from four case studies that reflect the complexities of African economies, rural and urban, formal and informal. The SEM model helps us focus on the three dimensions of a strong skills ecosystem: collaboration between a range of actors, key institutions and system leaders within the region (the horizontal); top-down policies, regulations, and funding streams that enable or constrain the regional skills ecosystem (the vertical); and the points where these two interact, often through mediation activities. In the case of the last of these three, our cases point to the importance of nurturing organisations which can provide SEM leadership, particularly in more fragile ecosystems. Yet, in none of the cases, are public vocational institutions playing the strong anchor role envisaged in the model. The significance of the paper lies in three ways it develops the SEM in relation to regional skills ecosystems. First, we problematise the notion of a facilitatory state and place it within wider national and global webs of power. Second, we insist that the local or regional is always embedded in and networked into myriad national and international levels. This requires a more complex understanding of how social skills ecosystems operate. Third, the notion of an anchor institution requires further elaboration. In most social ecosystems these institutions need to be built or strengthened and a clearer understanding is required of the processes of institutionalisation and what mechanisms make it possible to build this capacity and sustain it over time.
Development of Technological Capability in South African Industry: An Industrial Network Approach
2002
The paper deals with the first phase in a project on South Africa’s need to develop technological capability, especially in the private industry, as a means for achieving economic and social goals. For six decades, the South African industry has developed in a highly protective environment. The opening up of the market after the first democratic elections in 1994 and the current trade liberalization policy revealed a lack of international competitiveness in many branches of the industry. In order to increase the competitiveness and reintegrate South Africa in the world economy, there is a need, inter alia, to raise the technological capability both within surviving firms from “the old economy” and the new black empowered companies, which are now being established with support of the government. The study focuses on capability development through learning processes taking place in inter-firm relationships, in particular between foreign firms operating in South Africa and their local ...
Vocational and Technical Education, 2011
Despite the various reforms and attempts to relate the school curricula to the world of work, very few studies have been carried out to investigate the constraints and challenges of industrial and institutional linkages. This paper investigates specifically the department of Vocational and Technical Education (VOTEC) of the University of Cape Coast and the inability of the department to link its students with industries, a requirement of the University Curricula to propel its graduates into the world of work. Based on data from 60 respondents from within the university and industry, this paper argues that even though there is awareness of the need for these linkages, the curricula does not adequately cover practices in the actual industries. The results have important policy implications for curriculum and training of students in the VOTEC department and other institutions that provide similar training.
International Journal of Educational Development, 2009
Written in the twilight of the Mbeki Presidency, this paper considers the role that skills development has in the sustainability of the South African political–economic project. It explores some of the disarticulations of public policy and argues that these both undermine public sector delivery and open up opportunities for private provision to be, under certain circumstances, more responsive to the challenges of national development. We argue that there is a possibility that the state could work more smartly with both sets of providers. Crucially, however, this would necessitate working more smartly within itself. This was a major plank of the Mbeki strategy but it has failed conspicuously with regard to the Education–Labour relationship. Whether a new President can achieve a radical reworking of this relationship may be an important indicator of the viability of any new development project.The article concludes with reflections on the renewed international interest in skills development as a way of responding to the real and imagined pressures and opportunities of globalisation. Given the limited success of South Africa in pursuing skills development, we ask whether other African governments are any more likely to achieve a genuine combination of political, social and economic sustainability. The sustainability of national development projects in Africa is likely to continue to be problematic, and skills development will only ever be able to play a limited role in addressing this challenge. Nonetheless, governments can do more to support the sustainability of these skills development systems and need to pay attention to both public and private provision in so doing.