Tom Buringuriza : Skills Development in Uganda

Skills development is a popular topic in Uganda because of a large pool of unemployed or underemployed youth that are in Uganda. This problem is increasing and so a number of aspects have been observed.

There has been a tremendous investment in the social sector (demand side) for over two decades without an equivalent or matching investment in the investment and job creating aspects (supply side) and so there is a pool of educated  but  not  trained Ugandan young people, who  are  looking  for jobs.  Many of these young people do not meet the requirements of the world of work, especially with respect soft skills, product (output) oriented skills, ethics and integrity, as well as mindset and sense of urgency.

The  management  of  education  which  was  also  mandated to handle the management of training can only view things from the input driven approaches, which  education  demands  (blackboard,  chalk, classrooms,  books,  laboratory  equipment,  etc.) rather than from the output oriented (employment) view which training should be associated with. This links to a disconnection between the needs of job seekers and the employers’ needs Resources currently scattered in various sectors are wasted on workshops and alleged capacity building seminars rather than pooling them for a focused, planned and coordinated skills development effort witch the country’s vision and plans require.

Entrepreneurship trainers running two-week courses erroneously allege to be resolving the skills problem whereas not! An entrepreneur succeeds if he has a product (skill) but mere entrepreneurial training without products is not sustainable and will not result in any meaningful job creation as is being hinted by these trainers.

There is need for a realization that skills development should result in products and not theories or concepts. So skills development centers should also be viewed as enterprises dealing in those products which they train young people to make.  For example; a vocational school, teaching furniture production should sell furniture, whereas a technical school training builders can do it at a UPE building site and the graduation could coincide with the commissioning of a UPE school.  This way the resources that were used or are being used to build numerous UPE and USE schools can also be used simultaneously for vocational training to generate builders and furniture for the schools.

In general the number of observations is infinite if one reforms one’s mindset towards skills development.  However, the framework for reform towards an employment oriented skills development approach has been set up. An Act of Parliament providing for the reform on the basis of standards and a qualification framework, known as the Business, Technical and Vocational Education and Training Act 2008 (BTVET Act 2008) was passed. An  Industrial  Training  Council  was  appointed,  a  Uganda  Vocational  Qualifications  Framework was set up, and the Directorate of Industrial Training is in place.

Recommendations for the improvement of this effort to enable the resolution of the skills development question are as follows:

 

I. Remove skills development from the Education Sector and set up a Skills or Human Resource Development Sector (Ministry) in order to plan and coordinate training and employment or job creation. Pool the small budgets now scattered in  the  various  sectors  in  order  to  create  the  pool  of  resources  for  this  sector.  A  BTVET department at the Ministry of Education plus a Directorate of Industrial Training is a waste of resources. Nothing has come out of this for the last two decades. Studies have been done and even repeated and no result has been achieved. Some of these studies are a result of perpetual technical assistance that some donors have imposed on skills training for years and years unending without any result.  Technical and Vocational training institutions should have a business or enterprise section. Student companies are there in many countries where trainees are allowed to form a company and run it as part of the training. The company would sell the products they are trained to make. (Norway has been very successful in this approach. )

 

II. Recognize the training going on in enterprises1 all over the country and incentivize this training. Incentives can be via tax or capital allowance considerations whereas recognition of the training can be via the standards and qualification framework, on the basis of which assessment and certification would be based.  Basically, it would not matter where one is trained. As long as he fulfills the standards for an assessment, he would be certified.

 

III. The NDP should foresee the creation of the HR development sector and include in the plans for the future of the country and the achievement of the vision of Uganda

IV. Investment policies, and laws and regulations, as well as immigration should favor Ugandans who have satisfied the Uganda qualification framework. For example, an investor may be allowed to bring a Managing Director and a Chief Finance Officer automatically. However, any other employees would be allowed only if there are no Ugandans of that qualification2. In fact if there are none, the HR Development Sector would provide a deadline within  which  such  Ugandans  can  be  availed. After all, investments also have a lead time between  licensing  and  actual  implementation. Some investors have used the explanation that qualified  Ugandans  are  unavailable, simply  because the database of qualified Ugandans is not available anyway. The HR Development Sector would have this database, conduct tracer studies to  follow  up  trained  Ugandans, conduct labor market scans to identify missing skills and use them to promote skills development provision and investment in the country.

The realization of the issues hereinabove motivated me to think about writing about Skills Development. In addition, I have had several discussions even at a high level in government but no one seems to  understand the need for a paradigm shift. Accordingly, I decided to write. Fortunately at the time of writing, I was doing my MBA and so I chose the same topic for my MBA thesis. So the book resulted from both the MBA work as well as the problems listed above.