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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

Free Download - SMEs – SMEs struggling in South Africa. Why? By Dr. Rob Smorfitt
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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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Home > African-Accounts > Dr. Rob Smorfitt > SMEs in Africa the skills challenge grows
Article Tags: Africa, developed country, developing county, education, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, skills, skills migration, SME, SMME, Smorfitt

About the Author: Dr. Rob Smorfitt
RSS for Dr. Rob's articles - Visit Dr. Rob's website

Have an MBA and a PhD in entrepreneurship. Three key areas of ongoing research are entrepreneurship and innovation in large business strategy, the impact of legislation on SME development and SME finance. 


Run my own SME blog at http://sme-smb-smme.blogspot.com as well as an entrepreneurship and innovation for large businesses blog at http://innoveur.blogspot.com 


I have been self-employed since 1982. I have started or purchased in excess of 50 businesses since then. Most were sold again and a few were shut down because of a lack of profitability. Many were run by staff or family while I worked full time in my bigger businesses. 

Author of 6 books. Written articles for various magazines, newspapers and websites.  


Experienced in research within developing countries.

 



Click here to visit Dr. Rob's website
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Re: In-House or Outsource? Re: In-House or Outsource? - Unfortunately, in the South African context, very few SMEs see outsourcing as an option. They believe it is too expensive, and they are paranoid that someone will "steal their ideas". I believe that the three main functions that cannot be outsourced are marketing, sales and strategy. These must be done in house I believe. If you do not have the marketing skills then get them. Hire a consultant or attend a course, but get the skills. Even if you use a consultant, you need to understand what marketing is about, as no one knows your market like you do. Marketing is made to seem difficult and complex, but everyone who really understands their markets, can easily learn to do their own marketing. In South Africa, labour legislation is extremely inflexibile, and consequently labour broking is a large industry. This is an ideal starting point for SMEs in South Africa, as it is a legally complex area, whih comes with severe penalties. I say do it! Rob Smorfitt
Re: need advice Re: need advice - Africa is a pretty big place I think it is a question of where in Africa you would like to open a call centre. South Africa for example actually has plenty of call centres already operating, so it would very much depend on what part of Africa you are considering. MichelleJ
Biggest Challenge Biggest Challenge - Even though I've been in business going on 7 years, I would like to still consider myself a young entrepreneur. I dived into the business community directly out of college at the age of 22. Thinking back to the beginning, my biggest challenge was trying to revive a small-business on a rapid decline to closing the doors. It was a small accounting business in South Florida, and I had just taken over as the owner was retiring. It didn't take long to find out why he was retiring. My biggest challenge was to adjust my expectations of rapid financial gain, because I thought I was entering a fully functional business. I had to lower my sights, really learn the skills I needed to not only survive, but thrive. Nothing like a big challenge to get the creative juices flowing.
Re: Essential Leadership skills Re: Essential Leadership skills - Great thread, Yinka. I agree with Robert and GT that at any point in time we possess at least one of those skills, with the ability to call upon any of the other skills when needed. Of course, everyone is born with specific skills and traits, and some skills and traits need to be learned and put into practice first.
Why A Project Fails? Why A Project Fails? - Hello Everyone As the size and complexity of ones business grows, so does their need to effectively manage projects. I have been thinking about the major reasons why a project can go wrong and my limited experience comes up with the following. 1 Leadership: A project manager with leadership skills and not just management skills. 2 Failure to (Foresee and) Plan 3 Failure to Manage: Ineffective change management control methods. Unclear decision making guidelines. 4 Talent: Finding, allocating and developing people 5 Scope: Setting an overly ambitious or amibigious project scope 6 Alignment: When projects are not prioritized in alignment with the business strategy, or project members personal objectives are not in tandem with that of the project / company 7 Lack of Candor: Communication Breakdowns I would be interested in knowing everyone's thoughts on this, especially on ways to overcome the above mentioned obstacles. Cheers!


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