Skills Development

Situation at the outset

Access to vocational education and training and the labour market was used by the apartheid government as an instrument of oppression against the non-white population constituting approximately 90% of the population.

Economic engine. The economic growth of the recent years has only insignificantly reduced the rate of high unemployment. The deficit in education and training of the previously disadvantaged majority of the population has caused today’s shortage of skilled labour. This deficiency acts as an obstacle for higher economic growth in the country, limiting South Africa’s role as a “ locomotive” for the growth of rest of the continent.

Personal fate. Despite comprehensive structural reforms, the South African skills development system is not yet able to fully set off these deficits, both in terms of quality and quantity. The unskilled and poorly-skilled hardly have any prospects of formal employment. They are forced into unemployment or into the informal sector of the labour market.

Development Cooperation

Focusing on demand. The German Government is committed to and involved in providing a better system of skills development and further education. Together with the established private sector, it promotes the legal and financial framework conditions of the skills development landscape. The objective is the introduction of a demand-driven workplace-orientated skills development system on local and regional level.

Success. Since 2001, 6.3 million employees benefited from further education and 400,000 people have been trained for the formal labour market in long-term courses. 97% of them were able to obtain employment within 6 months. In addition, approximately 350,000 unemployed persons were trained in the informal labour market.

In the medium-term the programme is thought to become the sole responsibility of the South African partners.