Learning for Life, Work and the Future Initial ... - Unesco-Unevoc

Learning for Life, Work and the Future Participants’ Papers Page 71
It is true that many beneficiaries of graduates have left
training to the government. Industry in many countries
is not concerned with the way government-owned
institutions train their future employees. This trend has
to change, as the end result is disastrous not only to
industry, but to the nation concerned as well.
10. Conclusion
Access to TVET should be addressed. This is not easy
in the African setting due to poor economies, but a start
should be made. The idea of introducing distance
learning where it is not already being practised should
be discussed and implemented as soon as possible,
since this method of training ensures a country access
to TVET for its citizens.
20 MUTASA, Justin M. (Zimbabwe): Informal Sector Training in Africa
The informal sector in Africa is characterised by unregulated
small-scale activities in which the production
process and technological base are rudimentary and
focused on self-employment. Most of the informal
sector enterprises cater for the market in the lower
income groups or economic social strata. Therefore
the informal sector has the potential to grow, since the
bulk of the population in Africa is in the low-income
group.
The current winds of change blowing across Africa are
the economic structural adjustment programmes that
have brought about transformations in both the public
and private sectors of employment. Because of
globalisation, most public and private sector companies
in Africa are facing stiff competition from cheaper and
better quality products from Europe, South East Asia
and America. Therefore the companies are “downsizing”
or “rightsizing” and focusing on their core
business. The net result is that thousands of workers
are being retrenched from formal employment as companies
abandon unprofitable ventures. Some companies
that cannot survive competition close down completely
and workers are retrenched from formal
employment and thrown into the informal sector without
the relevant skills to survive.
To make matters worse, some of the present training
programmes in Africa have outlived their usefulness.
Before and after independence, a lot of training was for
formal sector employment. At times, the training and
curriculum developed was too academic, and ill-suited
to the economic realities that exist in Africa today
when the formal sector is shrinking because of the
harsh macro-economic conditions and the unprecedented
growth of unemployment. This has led to a
mismatch in some of the training programmes because
they are no longer relevant to economic realities.
As a result, almost all the school-leavers, and those
being retrenched from the mines and from public and
private sector companies, need some reorientation of
their skills to fit into the new informal sector environment,
where survival is tougher because it does not
offer high wages or command high prices for its goods.
Therefore there is a real need to train these people for a
“soft landing” in informal sector business.
The informal sector is now the biggest employer of
labour in Africa. In some cases it employs up to 60%
of the total urban employment population. In Tanzania
this figure is 53%, in Madagascar 56% and in Zimbabwe
more than 53%. Therefore, what is good for the
informal sector is good for the economies of African
states, since the informal sector is now making a
significant contribution to the Gross Domestic Product.
In some African countries, like Zimbabwe, Nigeria,
South Africa, Malawi and Cape Verde, partnerships
have been formed between the host government and
donors in order to strengthen vocational training
centres, and other public technical training colleges are
offering courses in carpentry and wood technology,
welding, metal fabrication, motor mechanics, radio
repair, garment-making, bookkeeping, entrepreneurship
skills and business development skills. The
objective of these courses is to link school-leavers and
retrenchees to job creation so that they can set up and
sustain their own micro and small-scale businesses in
the informal sector.
Successful partnerships between the host African
government, the donor and the local communities have
shown that the informal sector can play a pivotal role
in the economic and social development of African
states by skills training for self-employment and selfreliance.
Apart from partnerships and capacity-building between
host African governments, donors and local grassroots,
other strategies that can be used for the success of
informal sector business are the integrated approach,
training where the people live, trade testing and skills
upgrading, sustainable informal sector training, and
government legislation to collect a training levy from
eligible companies in both public and private sectors.
The government training levy is very effective,
especially after “donor fatigue”, when funds have dried
up and the donor has pulled out of the partnership. The
Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (ZIMDEF)
is now a key stakeholder in Vocational Training in
Zimbabwe and, in Malawi, the Industrial Training
Fund oversees the relevance of courses offered by
technical colleges, and administers the levy collected
from eligible employers. In Nigeria, the Industrial