JOHANNESBURG - South Africa has become infamous for being one of the most unequal countries in the world. The latest unemployment statistics from earlier this year revealed that the country’s rate now sits at 35.3%, placing us as the number one country on the continent with the highest unemployment rate.
According to Yershen Pillay, chief executive of the Chemical Industries Education and Training Authority, a statutory body established the Skills Development Act in 1998 to ensure that the country's needs were known and used to create various training initiatives in the chemical and manufacturing industries, says the high unemployment rates require action on the part of government, business, and civil society.
Pillay says by focusing on the skills mismatch as a root cause of the unemployment problem, this leads to a series of questions: “Does South Africa need a grand strategy on skills matching and what would that look like? How do we promote local and international collaboration in addressing the skills mismatch in South Africa? Does South Africa need a ‘Skills City’ in every province to bring together the local and international skills community for more positive results? How we bridge the digital...