SA should get to grips with its skills training and retention initiatives if it is to respond adequately to the disruptive effect of the fourth industrial revolution.
In the absence of a national platform to equip specialists and the rest of the country with the knowledge needed to confront this mammoth task of preparing for the future world of work, events company Cape Media held a national skills summit in Midrand this week.
The company received backing from the Department of Science and Technology, among other governmental and business partners.
However, what a brief attendance of the summit revealed was its disconnect from the reality that millions of South Africans live with, along with notions of the ideal country that some of the "experts" who addressed the gathering seemed to imagine SA to be.
There was little mention of the fact that most of the country’s workforce is lowly skilled and that any proposed solutions would have to be inclusive enough to create jobs for the 9-million unemployed.
Tech jargon was bandied about and attendees were told of how their children stood no chance of succeeding in life if they were not already receiving training in the programming languages used in coding.
According to the organisers, the aim of the summit was to unveil a "pragmatic vision of skills development that integrates the need to develop skills, create jobs and grow the economy" while taking note of the advent of the fourth industrial revolution.
Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training Buti Manamela was billed to open the summit but failed to show up due to other commitments.
A member of the audience pointed out that Manamela’s failure to prioritise the conference was telling, suggesting that the government has little consideration for the subject at hand, which will mostly affect the country’s population of predominantly youths.
In his place, Manamela sent an official from the National Skills Authority, Sally Mbanguwe, who presented the interventions contained in the proposed National Skills Development Plan.
In terms of the remedies in the document, about which public comment opened in December 2017, sector education and training authorities (Setas) will be restructured to deal with the interface between post-school education and training systems, and the jobs market.
Mbanguwe welcomed the fact that the platform’s aim was to conceptualise simple, tangible ways of dealing with the challenge at hand, saying boosting Setas would be the best way of dealing with the digital revolution.
What Mbanguwe failed to mention was that Setas have proven incapable of bridging the skills gap, with billions in funding being poured into institutions that failed to meet their targets.
Position unclear
Setas have also been accused of running expensive and wasteful administrative systems.
But Mbanguwe’s outlining of a plan for preparing the youth for the jobs market was nevertheless welcome as the government’s position on it has been unclear.
It was due to this very reason that entrepreneur and public speaker Lebo Gunguluza could proclaim that there would be no room for artisans. Save for Mbanguwe there was hardly a government official in sight to correct him.
The state’s own national artisan development programme provides ample proof that the need for workers with a skilled trade is not about to disappear overnight.
Gunguluza said "creative skills" would be of utmost importance in the fourth industrial revolution. He made no mention of the other skills named by the World Economic Forum in 2016 as the top 10 skills of 2020, such as critical thinking, problem solving and people management. Clearly, recognising them would not have supported his mantra that bordered on scare-mongering.
Gunguluza said that robotics were due to replace humans and that "there are so many jobs that are going to be lost in the next three years, it’s scary".
Hard landing
This fear has been part of the argument in the public discourse regarding the effects of the fourth industrial revolution, while other thinking has been that it all depends on how humanity prepares for the envisaged changes.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) emphasises the role of policy and dialogue as a way of charting the way forward with the aim of avoiding a hard landing.
The ILO’s global dialogue report includes SA’s contributory remarks on issues to be included in the work championed by the Global Commission on the Future of Work.
Among the body’s agenda points is the need to make "decent jobs for all" an integral part for the future of work.
At a 2017 ILO discussion on the same subject, nations and experts proffered suggestions on the critical question of what future jobs will look like. This was done through discussions that considered the interplay of technological innovations, structural transformation, economic development and social change.
SA will have to adjust to whatever findings are released by the global commission in 2019. And unlike dozens of other countries, its high unemployment rate, inequality and overrepresentation of low-skilled workers in the labour market will have to take priority in spearheading transformation in the jobs market.
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