South Africa’s skills gap: Why education must better match the economy - IOL

Cornelius Monama is the Head of Communication and Spokesperson at the Department of Higher Education and Training.

South Africa faces a difficult contradiction. South Africa has millions of unemployed people while employers simultaneously report shortages of critical skills.

Ours is an economy that continues to experience critical skills shortages while millions of people remain unemployed. The question, therefore, is not whether there is a skills problem.

The more important question is whether we are changing fast enough to ensure that the skills produced by our education and training system match the demands of an economy that is being reshaped by technology, innovation, and new forms of work.

The World Bank’s assessment of South Africa’s digital-skills pipeline, reported in The Star on September 9, 2026, brings this challenge into sharp focus. Its findings should not be dismissed or treated defensively.

They reinforce a challenge that the government has already identified and are consistent with the case for the Skills Revolution announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa and placed at the centre of the Department of Higher Education and Training’s programme by Minister Buti Manamela.

South Africa does not simply need more people with qualifications. It needs people with the knowledge, practical competence, and digital capabilities that enable them to participate meaningfully in a changing economy.

This requires a post-school education and training system that is more closely connected to workplaces, more responsive to labour-market demand, and better able to anticipate the skills that South Africa will need tomorrow.

The central purpose of the Skills Revolution is to close the distance between learning and livelihood, between qualifications and capability, and between the skills we produce and the skills our economy requires.

The challenge is particularly evident in digital and technology-related fields. Software development, cybersecurity, data and analytics, cloud computing, network infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and other digital capabilities are becoming increasingly important across virtually every sector of the economy. At the same time, technological change is occurring faster than traditional education and training systems can adapt.

This means that the government must be prepared to change the way the post-school education and training system operates. It is not enough to continue producing qualifications according to established patterns while the economy changes around us.

President Cyril Ramaphosa made this point clearly in his 2026 State of the Nation Address when he called for a fundamental overhaul of the skills development system, including a stronger dual-training model that combines education with practical workplace experience, greater industry participation and closer alignment between skills development and the needs of the economy.

Minister Manamela has similarly emphasised that the challenge is not simply to produce more qualifications. It is to strengthen the connection between education, skills, work, and economic development. In his 2026 Budget Vote, he made clear that access to education must ultimately contribute to employability, economic participation, and opportunity. 

The department’s R149.2 billion 2026/27 Budget Vote therefore places the Skills Revolution and digital transformation at the centre of its programme. This is not merely a statement of intent. Work is already under way to change the way skills are developed, delivered, and connected to economic opportunity.

One important area is the modernisation of qualifications and the expansion of occupational qualifications that place greater emphasis on practical competence and workplace experience. The shift towards occupationally oriented learning is intended to ensure that education and training remain relevant to technological change and labour-market requirements.

The second is the strengthening of the dual-training model, including apprenticeships, artisan development and workplace-integrated learning. Young people should not emerge from the education and training system having accumulated qualifications but lacking the practical experience required to enter the workplace.

This is particularly important for the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college system. TVET colleges must increasingly become major centres of occupational and technical skills development, with stronger and more structured partnerships with industry. The objective is to make the transition from classroom to workplace more credible, more systematic and more closely connected to employment.

Third, digital transformation must become an integral part of the post-school education and training system. The department is expanding digital learning and career guidance and strengthening programmes and partnerships in areas including artificial intelligence, data, software development, analytics, and cybersecurity.

The point is not to produce technology specialists for their own sake. It is to ensure that South Africans have the digital capabilities required to participate productively in an economy in which technology is increasingly embedded across sectors, occupations, and workplaces.

Fourth, employers must become active partners in determining and producing the skills that the economy requires. Minister Manamela has consistently stressed that the private sector cannot remain a spectator to skills development while simultaneously reporting shortages of appropriately skilled people. Business must therefore become a co-producer of skills.

The department has been engaging employers across sectors, including ICT, engineering, mining, agriculture and financial services, with the objective of translating these relationships into meaningful training, workplace exposure and employment opportunities.

This also requires a different approach to the governance and performance of the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs). The reform of the SETAs must strengthen industry participation, improve governance and ensure that skills development responds more directly to economic priorities.

Increasingly, SETAs must be judged not simply by how much money they spend or how many programmes they establish, but by the outcomes they produce. For example, how many people are trained, what they are trained in, where the training takes place, what it costs and, critically, how many ultimately progress into employment or meaningful economic participation.

This is where the World Bank’s intervention is particularly useful. It reminds us that the test of a skills system is ultimately not the sophistication of its policies or the number of qualifications it produces. The test is whether those skills are relevant, whether people can apply them and whether they create pathways into work and economic opportunity.

The government accepts that challenge.

But acknowledging the problem should not obscure the scale of the reforms already under way. Nor should the digital-skills challenge be viewed in isolation from broader inequalities in the education and training system.

Digital transformation is occurring in a society where access to devices, connectivity, and foundational digital skills remains unequal. A learner cannot progress into advanced digital fields if the foundations required for that progression are weak or inaccessible.

The response must therefore extend across the entire skills pipeline, from foundational learning and career guidance, through universities, TVET colleges, and community education and training, to workplace learning, continuing education, and employment. The objective is to create a system in which these parts do not operate as disconnected components, but as part of a coherent pathway from learning to livelihood.

For this reason, the Skills Revolution should not be reduced to a response to the latest report or to the latest skills shortage. It is a broader reform of how South Africa thinks about skills, education, work, and economic development.

The country cannot afford a skills system that stands still while the economy changes rapidly. Nor can we accept a situation in which employers struggle to find people with the capabilities they need while large numbers of young South Africans struggle to find meaningful opportunities.

That contradiction is neither inevitable nor acceptable. It requires a more deliberate connection between what the education and training system produces and what the economy requires.

The World Bank report, therefore, provides constructive evidence that can help the government sharpen and accelerate the work already under way. It also reinforces the importance of implementation, measurable outcomes and continuous engagement with employers.

The task before us is not to produce another strategy for its own sake. It is to implement the reforms already identified with greater urgency, coordination, accountability, and measurable targets.

The Skills Revolution is ultimately about changing the relationship between education and opportunity. South Africa must move from a system that too often measures success by qualifications produced to one that places greater emphasis on capabilities developed, workplace experience acquired, skills applied, and opportunities created.

As Minister Manamela has emphasised, the post-school education and training system cannot become a waiting room for unemployment. It must become a platform for empowerment, productivity, innovation, and national development.

Our vision is a skills system that anticipates economic change rather than merely responding to it; is informed by labour-market demand; gives employers a meaningful role in developing the skills they require; integrates digital capabilities across the post-school education and training system; and provides young South Africans with a credible pathway from learning to livelihood.

The skills challenge is real. The response must be equally real and urgent. It must be measured not by the strength of our intentions, but by the quality of implementation and the opportunities we ultimately create. That is the purpose of South Africa’s Skills Revolution.