by Munetsi Madakufamba
As the number of unemployed school-leavers and college graduates increases progressively in a dynamic Southern African Development Community (SADC), so does the need to make education more relevant to the practical demands of the region.
Despite acknowledgements several years ago that the education system across the region is still essentially colonial, and therefore irrelevant to contemporary southern Africa, very few practical steps are being taken to redress the anomaly.
“In formulating policies and programmes, close links will need to be developed with the business sector which utilises the technology and skilled people,” noted the SADC heads of state and government in the Windhoek Treaty of 1992.
But in a number of SADC countries, there is growing unemployment and underemployment among high school, technical college and university graduates going hand-in-hand with a severe shortage of high level manpower in critical science and technology-based fields badly needed by the economy.
While thousands of graduates fail to secure employment every year, “the most binding constraint to development of the region is inadequate professionally and technically qualified and experienced personnel.”
The reason for this is the mismatch between the educational system and the requirements of industry and commerce, according to Danny Meyer, president of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce.
Apparently, the issue of irrelevant curricula, and resultant lack of appropriate training in the skills required by the economy, is a problem affecting SADC as a whole. “The issues of availability, quality and relevance of education and training in member states continued to receive urgent attention,” says a 1996 SADC Human Resources Development sectoral report.
The sector, which is coordinated by Swaziland, is developing a protocol on Education and Training which is expected to harmonize, rationalize and strengthen education and training systems in southern Africa.
It is appalling to note, against this background, that the education sector, which is always among the top five ministries with the highest vote each time national budgets are announced, continues to spend money on theoretical education which is not required by industry and commerce.
About four years ago the University of Zimbabwe phased out a Bachelor of Technology degree because of its “limited theoretical grounding”. However, figures from the student affairs department at the UZ show that hundreds of graduates from the much touted Bachelor of Science Engineering, as well as those from the ever-expanding faculties of arts and humanities, have failed to secure employment in related fields and ended up as temporary teachers.
Champions of black empowerment in Zimbabwe and the region at large, cry foul when companies engage foreign expertise at the expense of local graduates, yet the anomaly remains that universities continue to produce, for one reason or the other, engineering scientists as opposed to applied engineers who are preferred by the private sector.
The focus of post-colonial education in southern Africa has been on increasing literacy with less emphasis on its relevance to the practical needs of society as evidenced by free primary education instituted by some countries. But the question is whether the level of literacy matters more than practical relevance.
In 1994 Malawi introduced free primary education resulting in a 100 percent increase in enrolment, followed by a massive recruitment of untrained teachers, a move critics said was a costly compromise on quality of education in the country.
Like many southern African countries, the education system in Malawi, both primary and secondary, has remained essentially colonial.
However, some countries, notably Botswana and Zimbabwe, seem to have taken heed of criticism from the private sector as they have unveiled plans aimed at what they call major educational reforms.
Both lower and higher education ministries in Zimbabwe announced last year that curriculum liaison committees had been established to look into ways of developing the human factor in education. In a related move, Botswana Minister of Education Gaositwe Chiepe told a local newspaper, the Daily News, that a Revised Education Policy had been adopted to equip students with modern educational techniques.
Sustainable use of natural resources and environmental consciousness is another area in which the education system is found lacking. Although some workshops are being held to influence positive change on environmental protection in the region, more still needs to be done to weave environmental education into the overall school curricula.
However, teacher training colleges in South Africa, conscious of the growing need to enhance environmental awareness and sustainable use of natural resources, have started using State of the
Environment in Southern Africa, a comprehensive report published in 1994 as part of the Communicating the Environment Programme (CEP) , a partnership initiative involving SADC ELMS, IUCN and SARDC.
The book, which among other things concentrates on the most pressing issues affecting environment in southern Africa is used by students in secondary education throughout the region for their environmental studies, though not yet part of the school curricula.
Dwindling financial resources demand productive and sustainable use of factors of production in all sectors of the economy, and education is no exception. Governments cannot, therefore, afford to continue wasting scarce resources on irrelevant education.
Closer cooperation among education authorities, industry and governments in curriculum development is needed if the current mismatch is to be avoided.
Governments should endeavour to produce high level manpower in response to the demands of the market as well as those of a dynamic society. That is the only way countries can “plan and manage the development process efficiently and effectively” as aspired in the Windhoek Treaty. (SARDC
