Higher education and training minister Buti Manamela has urged business, labour, civil society and government to work together to transform the country’s digital skills base.
This, in line with efforts to create employment, drive economic transformation and build a capable state that meets the demands of a changing workforce.
Manamela made the comments at the recent fifth Human Resource Development Council of SA (HRDC) summit in Johannesburg, where he stressed that the skills revolution should be a national compact.
The summit also served as opportunity for the HRDC to unveil its Reconceptualised Human Resource Development Strategy 2025-2035 and its implementation framework, the Master Skills Plan 2025-2030.
According to Manamela, in the State of the Nation Address, president Cyril Ramaphosa was unambiguous that human capital development is a central national priority of this administration.
However, the state cannot go it alone in achieving this objective, he stressed. “If it is a government project, it will achieve what government projects typically achieve: some of it, unevenly or not fast enough.
“If it is a national compact, if every constituency in this room owns a defined part of the solution and is held publicly accountable for delivering it, then something different becomes possible.”
The minister also noted that artificial intelligence is already reshaping what jobs exist, the required skills and what it means to be productive.
“The Just Energy Transition is creating new demand for artisans, technicians and engineers in sectors that did not exist in their current form five years ago. The green economy is growing. The digital economy is growing. The platform economy is growing and bringing with it a form of work that does not look like a job in the traditional sense, but is work nonetheless, performed by millions of South Africans who deserve qualifications, protections and skills pathways.”
Manamela further encouraged government to work with its partners in implementing the HRDC’s Reconceptualised Human Resource Development Strategy 2025-2035.
“South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis is not a social problem that business can observe from a distance. It is a structural feature of an economy that is not absorbing the people it educates.
“To organised labour: the skills revolution is not a threat to workers. It is the protection that retraining, upskilling and new qualification pathways provide in the face of disruption that is coming, whether we act or not,” concluded Manamela.
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