If South Africa wants to address unemployment it will have to change tack and actively look at ways to develop skills – the primary ingredient for economic growth.“The scarce skills discourse has been a topic of discussion for over 40 years in South Africa,” says Metro Minds founder and MD Juliette Fourie. “Scarce skills are blamed for the ongoing poverty, unemployment, and inequality in the country, but the reality is that it’s not being addressed, despite many efforts.”While much has been done to identify scarce skills, the misalignment between skills supply and demand over the past ten years has not changed.A recent report by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) on skills demand points out that 32% of the workforce in South Africa has a mismatch between their qualification and job. Fourie says creating a credible skills planning mechanism is therefore important to understand the skills demand and supply as well as alignment of capacity needed to drive business strategies, looking at the economic state, the labour force profile, the current demand, and the future demand. “All this would assist in addressing the misalignment between demand and supply.”Considering that South Africa has one of the fastest growing youth sectors around the globe, addressing skills development is critical. It is estimated that some 12 million young people are affected by a lack of jobs and missing work skills. The triple challenge of inequality, poverty, and unemployment is interdependent, requiring policymakers' attention. The youth's disadvantage due to insufficient education, which leads to poor communication skills, a lack of problem-solving skills, decision-making, business awareness, and technology knowledge, compounds the issue.This has been recognised by the DHET which has stated that a more coordinated, responsive, and coherent skills planning system is required.This is also true for the local transport and logistics industry and has been highlighted by the World Bank as one of the sectors with significant skills gaps.Fourie says the lack of Teta funding for training has had an impact on the industry, exacerbating the situation. “Due to the regulations put in place, skills development has become a regulation and compliance exercise and is no longer a need or demand exercise. We are no longer creating training programmes to meet the specific needs of a compa ny.”
