Raimo Ndapewa Naanda

In June 2004, President Sam Nujoma launched Namibia’s Vision 2030.  

This Vision aspired for Namibia to be an industrialised and prosperous nation, developed by its citizenry.  

This aspiration is premised on building a knowledge-based society. 

To attain the dreams and aspirations of Vision 2030 calls for a significant investment in the development of the human capital of this country.

In light of the Founding Father’s aspirations, there are only seven years left to attain Vision 2030. 

A question that we have to answer is, whether Namibians will be able to attain this noble dream come 2030?

At Namibia’s independence, government reformed the education and training sector to address the imbalances inherited at the time. 

A number of initiatives were embarked upon, which included the establishment of two public universities and vocational training centres to stimulate the educational drive towards achieving Vision 2030.  

Simultaneously, a number of private universities as well as other educational centres were established and are operational in the country. 

Government is currently ensuring that there are public technical and vocational education and training (TVET) centres in all political regions of the country. 

With such a development, one can argue that the country is on the right path to becoming a knowledge-based society, albeit more still needs to be done and achieved in the sphere of educational development.

What is worrying in Namibia, is the well-documented skills mismatch prevailing. A lot of students and trainees graduate from our tertiary institutions. 

Yet, many of these graduates find themselves unemployed, which leaves us pondering as to what is going wrong, or what are we not doing right, especially given that the government is investing significant resources in developing a knowledge-based society?

 Of course, one can argue that the skills generated at our tertiary institutions are not aligned to the skills demanded to grow Namibia’s economy or that the overall system (economy) is not supporting and or developing skills to such an extent that graduates can create their employment opportunities and similarly extend employment opportunities to others

I believe what is lacking in Namibia, is the industry intelligence to inform the tertiary education sector about the skills in demand to grow the Namibian economy. 

This gap can be filled by starting with research to determine the real gaps, which will translate to coming up with workable/practical policies which must henceforth be implemented. 

Perhaps, there are already some studies done in this area and what needs to be done to enforce implementation of some of the policy recommendations emanating from previous studies.

To further elaborate on the above, in 2010, Namibia adopted a skills development plan aimed at providing some sort of skills in demand in various sectors of the economy. 

However, what is challenging is the implementation of the skills development plan due to the absence of a National Human Resources Development Strategy, which the Ministry of Higher Education, Technology and Innovation, is currently formulating. 

One can only hope that with the adoption of the National Human Resources Development Strategy, the issue of skills mismatch will be amicably resolved.

For now, the tertiary sector is concentrating more on the supply side of skills, which appears not to be considering the demand side, resulting in such a high graduate unemployment rate. 

Tracers studies conducted by the Namibia Training Authority and the National Council on Higher Education revealed worrying and or rather scary findings of graduates from tertiary institutions who are unemployed or unemployable due to a lack of appropriate skills in some instances.  

I am not going to go into further details about these tracer study findings since those reports are out in the public domain.

The above argument is to provide a perspective on where Namibia is in terms of skills development. 

The Ministry of Higher Education, Technology and Innovation, recently launched critical policies which are: (1) the revised TVET Policy, (2) the Namibia Space Science and Technology Policy and (3) the National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy. 

All these policies call for scaled-up investment for the TVET sector as well as the promotion of Science Technology and Innovation (STI) in the country.  

Surely, one can hope that with such policies in place and their implementation, Namibia is going to be on the right course to attain the aspirations of Vision 2030.

Evidence on the ground, however, informs us that Namibia is investing less than 1% of Gross Development Product (GDP) in research and development, as well as innovation. 

Also, the TVET sector, which I am passionate about, is not spared from the meagre resources it receives from the Treasury, despite the levy contributions received from eligible employers whose wage bills are over N$1 million per annum. For Namibia to develop its research and development, as well as innovation capabilities, a significant investment is required. 

Also, to develop the skills required to transform the Namibian economy, a significant investment is required for the education and training sectors. 

If we are unable to invest in the generation of pre-requisite skills to develop our economy, I argue for us to be knowingly ignorant and see what the implications could be for Namibia in the long run.

•This opinion piece is written by Dr Raimo Ndapewa Naanda in his personal capacity as a TVET expert. Dr Naanda is a holder of a PhD in Curriculum Studies from the University of Stellenbosch.