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SME's - in Africa the skills challenge grows

Guest post by: Dr. Rob Smorfitt

Article Overview: The impact of the skills drain on SME's in Africa

SME's - in Africa the skills challenge grows

The global trend for skills to migrate from developing to developed countries is presenting major problems for the African continent. Unlike the Far East countries like China for example, who are producing 600 000 engineers per annum, Africa is lagging very far behind.

Very few if any countries in Africa have been doing artisan training, and South Africa stopped doing this training properly when they changed the system to a "learnership" system.

Engineers are a rare site in our universites in most African countries, and HR is extremely popular. In South Africa we are producing HR graduates in abundance, followed by Social Science students and very little else. Or at least very little of value to the business community.

Quantas Airways recently removed 30 staff in one exercise from the SAA maintenance company. This is of enormous impact on our own ability to maintain aircraft.

The drain is also not limited to whites only. Black artisans are leaving as quickly.

The continent's educational institutions, outside of South Africa, are delivering too few quality students. The one place that was still delivering quality graduates was Zimababwe, but until oder and democracy is restored here, we have no idea if the sole bastion of African educational excellence is still capable.

The Soth African universities still have the capacity and capability, but the students lack the passion and desire to excell at math and accounting, and hence the abundance of HR graduates.

This has to lead the issues in Africa which govern our future success!

Rob Smorfitt

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Article Tags: Africa, developed country, developing county, education, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, skills, skills migration, SME, SMME, Smorfitt



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