WINDHOEK – The Namibian business sector has been urged to become more actively involved in the activities of the Namibian Business School, especially in curriculum development, to ensure that qualifications offered by the school meet their requirements and to remedy the skills and knowledge shortage in the labour market.
Speaking exclusively to New Era on Tuesday the development and fundraising officer of the NBS, Ebson Kaapama, said the reason there is a high number of unemployed graduates in Namibia is, because their qualifications do not meet those required by the market. “The private sector seem not to support activities of the business school, because they expect government to do it while they end up benefitting the most. We want them to show more interest and be part of our activities, especially in curriculum development,” said Kaapama.
They must come on board he said, so that they can propose how they want the programmes to be crafted. “Although we also identify the needs of the labour market, we need the business sector to come forward and present their input,” he said.
With a high number of graduates roaming the streets unemployed, Kaapama warned that the situation could get even worse if technical institutions are not capacitated. “Considering the size of our economy and the fact that we are a developing nation, there is need for technical institutions such as vocational training centres to be capacitated so that we can avoid having only management institutions,” he cautioned.
Kaapama said most graduates have more theoretical rather than practical knowledge, hence their inability to get absorbed in the labour market, which mostly requires technical skills because of the development status of the country. The business school, which falls under the University of Namibia’s faculty of economics and management science, currently operates on the university’s premises, but plans are in the pipeline to build a state-of-the-art N$50 million campus, he said. Kaapama also indicated that there are several foreign lecturers at the business school, a situation he says, is occasioned by the lack of professors locally.
By Mathias Haufiku