Government to align scholarships, critical skills shortages

Zimbabwe’s government has allocated about US$6 million in its 2025 national budget to address the country’s critical skills needs by aligning scholarships to sectors with skills deficits, formulating a national skills strategy and updating its national skills audit report.

Presenting the national budget in the country’s parliament in November, Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube said the government undertook consultative workshops and meetings throughout the country to understand the skills landscape.

Subsequently, the government was aligning scholarships towards critical skills needs and was prioritising the skills agenda across all the economic sectors.

“This process will culminate in the updated National Critical Skills Audit Report, which will facilitate the formulation of a National Skills Policy and Strategy, spelling out policies and programmes that [will] enable the country to adapt to and benefit from the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” Ncube said.

“In this regard, ZWG153.2 million (about US$6 million) has been allocated to the ministry of skills audit and development, to support the above-mentioned activities,” he added.

What the 2018 report said

According to the 2018 audit report, the main skills challenges Zimbabwe faced at the time were those related to the gap between what skills educational and training institutions delivered and what industry needed – in technical and soft skills.

The audit provided a snapshot of the nation’s existing skills gaps, redundancies, shortages and emerging technological trends, allowing the identification of specific training programmes and the prioritisation of education and training.

It noted that the country had the advantage of a sound public education system and a thriving private education services industry, which formed a strong base for efforts to tackle various skills challenges.

The report grouped the critical skills required in the economy into six skills clusters: engineering and technology; natural and applied sciences; business and commerce; agriculture; medical and health sciences, as well as applied arts and humanities.

Of those with a deficit of critical skills, only the applied arts and humanities had a modest deficit (18%), with the rest having critical shortages of above 90%. The engineering and technology skills cluster showed a skills deficit of 93.57%, natural and applied sciences output deficit was 96.91%, the medical and the health sciences skills cluster’s was 95% and the agriculture skills cluster’s deficit was measured to stand at 88%. With agriculture contributing 68% of those in employment in Zimbabwe, this shows that the majority of those working in the sector are not formally skilled.

On the other hand, business and commerce showed a skills output surplus of 21%, according to a section in the skills audit report.

Reforms proposed

The audit report made a number of recommendations, which included the need for curricula and syllabi reforms.

On engineering and technology, it said the education and training curricula should encompass emerging and future trends in areas such as nanotechnology, robotics and information and communication technologies, or ICTs. It also said there is a need to review curricula for the business and commerce sector to infuse big data analytics, machine learning and predictive financial analytics.

The report said there was also a need to mainstream cybersecurity skills, given that Zimbabwe has achieved 96% electronic banking transaction levels.

On medical and health sciences, it said: “There is a need to establish new training programmes to cover the aforementioned gaps, taking into cognisance new and emerging health technologies such as genomics and personalised medicine; virtual reality medicine; the future of pharma; digital health sensors and wearables in healthcare; 3D printing in medicine; medical robotics and artificial intelligence.”

It also added that there was a need to expand international medical and health skills exchange programmes to build local critical masses.

The government’s plans come at a time when Zimbabwe is failing to stem the flight of critical skills in the face of an ongoing economic crisis and state repression.

So far, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who succeeded Robert Mugabe following a coup in November 2017, has not been able to usher in the economic and political reforms needed to turn around the economy.