- Africa Urged to Replace Education-Led Training with Employment-Driven Skills System
Africa’s skills crisis is not simply that too few people are trained. It is that governments often cannot say with confidence which skills already exist, where the most damaging shortages lie or whether billions spent on education are producing jobs, stronger enterprises and higher productivity.
That uncomfortable diagnosis sits behind proposals Ghanaian agribusiness leader Kofituo Anthony Morrison Selorm Kwasi is taking to the third Africa Skills Week in Harare, Zimbabwe: a continental audit of Africa’s capabilities and a decisive shift from education-led training to employment-led skills development.
Mr Morrison, chief executive of the Chamber of Agribusiness Ghana and chairperson of the Agriculture Sector Skills Body under the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, will join a panel supported by UNESCO and the International Labour Organization.
The discussion on next-generation Sector Skills Bodies brings together specialists from Africa, Asia and Europe. But the significance of Ghana’s contribution lies less in conference representation than in the challenge it presents to the continent’s prevailing skills model.
Across Africa, governments routinely measure progress through enrolment, course completion and certificates awarded. These statistics are easy to publish and politically attractive. They are also inadequate indicators of economic transformation.
A qualification does not prove that a graduate has secured decent work, that an employer has filled a difficult vacancy or that a business has become more productive. Training can expand while unemployment remains high because the skills supplied are poorly matched to the capabilities demanded by agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, technology and other productive sectors.
Mr Morrison’s central argument is that Africa must stop treating certification as the final product of its skills system. The real test should be whether training leads to jobs, better earnings, stronger businesses and measurable improvements in productive capacity.
“Africa cannot plan its industries without knowing the skills it has and the skills it lacks,” he said. “We must stop judging skills systems by how many certificates they issue.”
That proposition is relevant to Ghana. The country has expanded technical and vocational education and introduced competency-based training, yet employers continue to report shortages in practical, technical and managerial capabilities. At the same time, many young people complete education without obtaining work that uses their training.
The contradiction points to a deeper coordination failure. Education institutions develop programmes, employment agencies track labour conditions, industries make investment decisions and government ministries pursue agricultural or industrial policies. Too often, these systems operate in parallel rather than around a shared picture of future workforce needs.
Mr Morrison’s first proposal is for the African Union Commission, working with UNESCO, the ILO and national authorities, to develop a Continental Skills Audit.
The proposal may sound administrative, but it addresses a strategic weakness. Africa is attempting to implement the African Continental Free Trade Area, expand agro-processing, digitise public and private services, build infrastructure and participate in green industrial value chains without a consistent account of the occupational capabilities available across its economies.
Governments may know the number of people holding formal qualifications but have a weaker understanding of competencies acquired through apprenticeships, informal work, farming, family businesses and years of practical experience.
That omission is significant because much of Africa’s workforce operates outside formal employment and conventional training systems. An audit that counts only certificates would reproduce the same weakness the proposal is intended to correct.
Mr Morrison therefore wants national audits conducted through a common continental methodology, covering formal and informal workers and identifying shortages, surpluses and emerging competencies. The evidence would be connected to industrialisation, infrastructure, technology, trade and agrifood priorities.
The strongest feature of the proposal is its pilot-first approach. Beginning with selected value chains such as agrifood and agro-processing would allow governments to test the methodology against practical investment and employment needs before attempting a continent-wide exercise of enormous complexity.
Yet an audit would be valuable only if governments act on its findings. Africa does not lack reports diagnosing skills gaps. Its more persistent problem is converting research into redesigned curricula, financed training, workplace experience and recruitment.
The audit must therefore be treated as economic infrastructure rather than another data project. Its findings should influence where training institutions are established, which courses receive public funding, what equipment is procured and which sectors are prioritised for apprenticeships and employer partnerships.
The second proposal is more politically challenging: reorganising the governance, financing and measurement of skills development around employment and productivity outcomes.
This would give employers, workers and labour authorities a stronger co-leadership role alongside ministries and educational institutions. Training investments would be linked to demonstrated occupational demand, while performance would be judged through job placement, earnings, job quality, enterprise growth and productivity.
Such a model would change incentives. A training provider would no longer be considered successful merely because students completed a programme. Policymakers would ask how many graduates entered relevant employment, created sustainable businesses or applied their skills to improve an existing enterprise.
Outcome-based measurement must therefore avoid blaming training institutions for every weakness in the economy. It should instead establish whether programmes supply competencies that employers need and whether other constraints prevent those skills from becoming productive.
Reliable tracking will also be essential. Ghana and many other African countries lack robust systems for following trainees from the classroom into employment or enterprise. Without credible data, outcome-linked funding could reward institutions for claims that cannot be independently verified.
The agricultural focus gives the proposals particular urgency. African agricultural training has often concentrated on primary production, even though modern agribusiness depends on a much wider occupational network.
Mechanisation technicians, irrigation specialists, equipment operators, seed experts, processors, packaging professionals, cold-chain managers, quality controllers, logistics operators and digital-service providers all determine whether agricultural output becomes competitive commercial value.
Weaknesses in these supporting capabilities contribute to low yields, equipment breakdowns, post-harvest losses and poor product quality. They also restrict the ability of African businesses to meet export standards and exploit opportunities under continental free trade.
Mr Morrison argues that agricultural skills must be planned around the industries Ghana and Africa intend to build, not only around traditional occupations. This includes anticipating capabilities required for precision farming, artificial intelligence, renewable energy, climate-smart production and data-driven agricultural services.
That forward-looking emphasis matters because training systems usually respond slowly while technology changes rapidly. Designing a programme after an occupational shortage becomes severe can leave countries several years behind investors and competing markets.
Ghana’s experience under UNESCO’s Better Education for Africa’s Rise initiative offers a foundation. Labour-market studies have identified present and emerging agricultural capabilities and supported competency-based training. The next step is to institutionalise the process so that labour-market intelligence routinely changes training decisions.
Sector Skills Bodies are intended to connect industry knowledge with public training systems. Their effectiveness, however, depends on whether they have clear mandates, sustainable financing, credible data and meaningful employer and worker participation.
Mr Morrison wants them to “close the loop” from a shortage identified to a shortage filled. That would require them to help shape occupational standards, curricula, workplace learning, assessments and investment priorities, while monitoring whether interventions improve workforce performance.
An emerging proposal for an Africa Skills Council could extend that coordination across borders. It could support common approaches to labour-market intelligence, recognition of competencies and workforce planning for regional value chains without replacing national institutions.
The council’s value would depend on disciplined design. Africa already has multiple institutions and frameworks whose mandates overlap. Creating another body without reliable financing, authority or measurable deliverables would add bureaucracy rather than capacity.
Its strongest purpose would be practical: enabling employers and sector bodies in different countries to define shared occupational requirements, support skills mobility and align training with cross-border production and trade.
The broader message from Ghana’s contribution is that skills should be treated like roads, electricity, finance and technology: essential infrastructure for production. A factory without technicians, a digital platform without data specialists or a processing plant without quality-control professionals is an investment whose productive potential cannot be realised.
Africa’s skills debate must therefore move beyond how many people enter training. It must ask what economies are trying to produce, which capabilities that production requires and whether public spending is closing the gap.
The continental audit and employment-led model offer a credible framework, but their success will depend on execution. Governments must be willing to redirect funding away from programmes with weak outcomes, employers must invest time and resources in training, and institutions must publish results that expose both progress and failure.
For Ghana, the opportunity is to translate its agricultural skills structures into measurable improvements in mechanisation, processing, storage, logistics and exports. Representation in Harare will matter only if the argument returns home as policy.
The decisive question is not whether Africa can produce more qualifications. It is whether the continent can build a system in which every certificate represents a capability the economy needsand every skills investment has a credible path to work, enterprise and productivity.
