Minister of Higher Education and Training Buti Manamela has called on business, labour, civil society and government to work together to transform the country’s skills base, create jobs, drive economic transformation, and build a capable state that can meet the demands of a changing workforce.
He stressed that in the State of the Nation Address earlier this year, President Cyril Ramaphosa was unambiguous: human capital development is the central national priority of this administration.
“Not because it sits well in a policy document, but because South Africa cannot grow, cannot create jobs, cannot transform its economy, and cannot build a capable state without the skills to do all of these things,” the Minister said on Thursday.
While addressing delegates at the 5th Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) Summit in Johannesburg, he said the skills revolution should be a national compact.
“If it is a government project, it will achieve what government projects typically achieve. Some of it. Unevenly. 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,” Manamela said.
With the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, artificial intelligence is already reshaping what jobs exist, what skills they require, and what it means to be productive.
“Our speakers today will bring evidence from the World Economic Forum and from leading institutions about the scale and pace of this disruption, greater than most skills systems in the world are currently prepared for.
“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,” the Minister said.
Taking place under the theme: “Living and Working in a Changing World,” the HRDC launched the Reconceptualised Human Resource Development Strategy (HRD Strategy) 2025–2035 and its implementation framework, the Master Skills Plan (MSP) 2025–2030.
The strategies aim to reform the country’s skills development system, reduce unemployment, and better align education with economic needs.
The new strategy identifies four catalytic goals with the potential to unlock system-wide impact:
- Improving early learning and schooling outcomes, recognising that foundational capabilities determine life opportunities.
- Improving the employability of youth who are not in employment, education, or training, especially through short courses, work-based learning, and entrepreneurship.
- Enhancing the responsiveness of the post‑school education and training system, particularly to skills demanded by the green, digital, and care economies.
- Building a capable, ethical, and developmental state, without which no reform can be sustained.
While the new national skills framework accounts for the changing landscape, the Minister emphasised that a strategy does not train anyone.
“This is the most comprehensive and forward-looking national skills framework that South Africa has produced,” the Minister said.
However, he acknowledged that South Africa has a governance problem, not a policy problem, and not primarily a funding problem, but a governance problem.
“The institutions we have built to implement this strategy are not yet operating at the level that the task requires.
“Our Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) system holds billions of rands in levy funds and has the potential to transform skills delivery at the sector level. In some sectors, it is doing exactly that. In others, the funds are not reaching learners in ways that change outcomes,” Manamela said.
He expressed concern about how the HRDC council operates.
“The HRDC has all the right architecture. But a body that meets periodically, produces communiqués, and waits three years for the next Summit to check whether anything happened is not an accountability body. It is a consultation forum,” the Minister said.
He encouraged the government to work with its partners in implementing the strategy.
“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,” the Minister said.
He said South Africa is at a moment of genuine possibility.
“What remains to be built is the accountability architecture that makes all of this mean something beyond this room,” the Minister said. - SAnews.gov.za
