Zimpapers Logo

Sikhulekelani Moyo ,[email protected]

SKILLS Audit and Development Minister Professor Paul Mavima has emphasised the need to promote skills in critical technical areas in a bid to enhance the country’s competitiveness and keep abreast with the fast-paced technological advancements in the world.

Addressing participants to the Bulawayo provincial skills consultation workshop on Wednesday, Minister Mavima said Zimbabwe has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa but its skills level and adaptability are still very low.

Adversely, he said, this has undermined the country’s developmental trajectory.

Minister Mavima said the mass exodus of skilled personnel from Zimbabwe in the last two decades created a vacuum which needs to be addressed through a skills revolution that includes reversing the human capital flight and focusing on contemporary skills needs.

President Mnangagwa established the Ministry of Skills Audit and Development last year as a way of addressing the findings of the 2018 National Critical Skills Audit, which highlighted that the economy is suffering from acute skills shortages even though the country has a huge population of educated people who are unemployed, especially the youths.

The skills shortage points to the need to realign what is being produced by training institutions to critical skills, which are required by various socio-economic sectors.

This also reflects redundancy of some of the available skills and the need to develop the required skills as well as modernise them for both the present and the future in line with the country’s industrialisation and modernisation agenda.

Prof Mavima said it was against this background that his ministry was created to bridge these gaps and ensure that all training institutions are informed and capacitated to produce skilled professionals who meet the skills requirements for both the private and public sectors.

“To remain competitive in the complex global economy, we should enhance our skills in critical technical areas such as manufacturing, engineering, sustainable agriculture and mining.

“We also need to develop skills in emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), design thinking, data science and digital marketing,” he said.

Prof Mavima said Zimbabwe needs to adopt a deliberate strategy for a skills revolution to keep abreast with the fast-paced global technological advancements.

He said the world of work is changing constantly and fundamental soft skills such as leadership, effective communication, emotional intelligence, adaptability, negotiation, teamwork and collaboration are equally important to be successful in today’s fast-paced work environments.

Minister Mavima said the ongoing stakeholder engagements from various sectors in all the country’s 10 provinces would be useful in identifying sector specific skills needs and gaps that must be filled in terms of existing and emerging skills.

In her briefing, the ministry’s permanent secretary Ambassador Rudo Chitiga said the provincial skills consultation workshop will help identify different skills gaps in each province as provinces have different legacies with different skills needs.

She said about 30 engagements have been done at national level where Government departments and ministries were engaged to find out their challenges and skills development needs.

“The President has stressed the need for devolution, that is, start development from the bottom up. Each province has different endowments and as such we cannot just generalise,” said Ambassador Chitiga.

In her welcoming remarks Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister Juditch Ncube who was represented by her permanent secretary Mr Paul Nyoni said skills development is at the heart of any meaningful socioeconomic development of any nation.

She said for provinces to achieve different economic development agendas, they need a complement of relevant skills to implement and review different policies.

“Shortage of human capital and skills gaps continue to militate against the full implementation of devolution programmes across all the tiers of the Government,” she said.