eBusiness Weekly
Alfred M. Mthimkhulu
I spent most of daylight Monday reviewing and reflecting on the 2018 National Critical Skills Audit Report by the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development.
Ours is a time of fleeting professions in both the formal and informal sectors. Today I am sharing this piece as an academic. A decade and change ago, I was yelling “I’m a buyer” and “I’m a seller” at the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) on behalf of clients of the oldest stockbroking firm in the country. It was clear to many of us then, save a few die-hards, that the days of open-cry trading were numbered.
I recall at some point the ZSE banning the use of mobile phones during trading. The reasoning was that traders without mobile phones would have been disadvantaged since those with phones could instantly update clients thus gunner new orders. Now anyone can download the C-Trade App and trade from wherever. The rest is as good as the history of the stone age.
Ours are also fascinating times. Right now, a customer can call some local business with a problem and the voice on the other end could be half way across the world yet convey a spot-on solution even educating the customer on a lot more services offered by the local business. It is not a far-fetched thought that some youngster in Lagos is at this very moment busy on her computer coordinating a project or an App for launch next week in San Francisco.
Talking of Apps, that App on his phone or that watch-like thing around her wrist alerts them on their heart rate, blood pressure etc. generating a lot of data to be analysed at will while googling most fitting diets. This has implications on the regularity of their visits to the doctors and the type of medical support personnel (if any at all) most suited to talk to them at the health centre.
As I was writing this piece, a tweet by Empowering People Network drew my attention thanks to the tag “@SolarSPELL”. It was about a Webinar to be hosted by Engineering for Change and Dr Laura Hosman from Arizona State University on “why offline technologies provide better solutions for education in all environments”. I clicked a link, typed my email and in a second my attendance to the virtual seminar on July 31, 2019, at 1100 EST was confirmed.
These are the minutes of our lives, short and eventful like our careers. It is on these realities that we must approach the 2018 National Critical Skills Audit Report. Given the changes we are navigating and a lot more coming our way in this world, what should we be learning and what should we be unlearning?
Questions on our futures are hard to answer. My alma mater Stellenbosch University for instance has the Institute for Futures Studies dedicated to developing methodologies that tackle such questions. Commendably, our Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education recently stepped-up to address the skills futures question in Zimbabwe. How did they do it? They gathered key stakeholders who included colleges, universities, industry associations, professional bodies, government departments and employment agencies. From the stakeholders’ meeting, six clusters were created: Business and Commerce; Engineering and Technology; Natural and Applied Sciences; Agriculture; Medical and Health Sciences; and Applied Arts and Humanities.
After deliberations within each cluster and some desktop research, critical skills were identified. Thereafter, the skills gaps were determined with reference to ZimStats data weighed against the norm or “an average country” in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The methodology is explained comprehensively and requisite appendices attached for interrogation and improvements by others as should be in any such undertakings for they are never perfect.
What were the critical skills and gaps identified? Methodologically, the Medical and Health Sciences cluster seems least likely to be contentious so let us look at it. It was found that with a total of 4 300 medical personnel, Zimbabwe needs an additional 80 000 to be at par with the average in the OECD. This means that the cluster’s skills gap is 95 percent. This gap is least severe in Pathology where it is 61 percent or, in other words, 51 more pathologists would make Zimbabwe equal to the OECD average in Pathology.
The gaps are bad in most clusters and offer a plausible validation of an oft cited unemployment rate of 90percent. Applied Arts and Humanities have a deficit of 18 percent while Business and Commerce has a surplus of 21 percent.
What does all this mean for Zimbabwe? The Report has an uninspiring conclusion. Here is part of it: “Therefore, in order for Zimbabwe to be a middle-income economy by 2030, focused skills training is required in the above areas. Scholarships, curricula and syllabi should therefore focus on these areas”.
But if gaps are 95 percent who will be the trainer? How long will it take to close them? Given the 2030 target and Zimbabwe’s diaspora endowment, what can the country learn from the likes of Australia and South Africa in attracting skills, and how can the critical skills currently on the ground be retained?
But a more fundamental concern is the basis on which each cluster determined critical skills. Arguably, the basis should have been the industrial structure as envisioned by the Zimbabwe National Industrial Development Policy (ZNIDP). It seems unlikely that this was the case because the ZNIDP came out in June just like the Audit Report. In any case, the ZNIDP does little to abstract itself from the existing industrial landscape such that the 2030 landscape mirrors today’s, only larger.
In the spirit of critical debate as encouraged by the Critical Skills Audit Report it must be said that the Report itself as the ZNIDP are rushed documents. This is understandable. Citizens are restless. They want to see action and results. But Vision 2030 will not be realised without a drastic shift in mindsets and a realisation that tracking other countries will only sustain our poor rankings in the world. Something extraordinary must be done.
What needs to be done urgently is to capacitate (and perhaps launch new) dedicated and non-partisan institutes even within the civil service to collate data, analyse it, initiate debates and propose polices. Our very best graduates must want to join these institutes. When that is done as it will eventually, then these policy documents before us now, all produced in a few months, can be deemed Terms of Reference for robust modelling and policy simulations by such institutes.
◆ Alfred M. Mthimkhulu is a Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Business, NUST. Email: [email protected],Twitter: @mthimz
