University and Employability Skills in Africa

Introduction To Universities

University and employability skills are today seen as one and the same thing. This to put records clear is not a new thing. This perspective on university has always been like that since the inception of the idea of universities.

When universities were established in the 11th century had the task of meeting the needs of the day. The needs at the time were to meet the objective of the church and the state. That being the case universities served the purpose of training students with skills or to use the todays vocabulary the employability skills of the day were those of serving the interests of the church. All matter should be judged by its context by then it was great meeting the needs of the institutions of the day.

University and Employability Skills

University and employable skills are one and the same thing nowadays and it is a call of the day. When debates about employment, unemployment are staged employability skills is one of the issues that come up quite often.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) in most literature insists on employability skills as one of the key factors for youth and university graduates to fit in the job market and get employed. The challenge however, is do universities offer the skills needed in the market industry. That was an argument in the recent past, it is now being addressed. Most universities are busy giving employable skills to students to the point of forgetting another important task of the university.

The trend in the world now to many universities is to put emphasis on giving employability skills to students to the expense of preparing a balanced human person intellectually and emotionally. In fact giving of employability skills to students and making sure, through the skills that the alumni get absorbed into the labour market. In fact, this is one of the criteria for being among the best universities when it comes to ranking universities.

In How to Think as University student the emphasis is put on training a university student on how to think correctly through the different aspects such as logic, creativity, positive attitude, and much more. In the book we argue a student should be given the skills that will make him/her competent to create businesses.

Graduates and Employment in Africa

Conventional wisdom is that when a university student completes their studies, they would be engaged in a job putting to practice the skills they acquired at university as students. Engaging graduates is a great desire for prosperous economy in developing countries. The young person from school, in most cases is full of skills and knowledge and at times completely new knowledge that would improve production or better the offered services.

Bearing this fact in mind the well organized economies would facilitate many youth join university studies, universities act as incubators of development of talents and skillful personnel who in turn would, through their work, stir up economic growth which influence economic development in a country.

However, this conventional wisdom does not apply to most African countries. The continent has the least number of youth joining university studies where the gross enrollment ratio for university studies is less than 10 percent for most African countries in the whole area of sub Sahara Africa with the exception of South Africa, Mauritius and Botswana, this fact is reported by the study of Cloet, et. al 2015. In logic, having a small number of graduates would have all been absorbed into the employment market, however, that is not the case in the African continent.

The reasons for unemployment in Africa are complex; they include lack of information about the job opportunities, graduates lacking the needed skills in the job market, and stagnant economies failing to create new job opportunities.

Employability of African Graduates

Employability is an issues defined by different bodies in the world. ILO defines it as portable competencies and qualifications that enhance an individual’s capacity to make use of the education and training opportunities available in order to secure and retain decent work, to progress within the enterprise and between jobs, and to cope with changing technology and the labour market conditions.

Graduates are encouraged to equip themselves with the skills that are needed by the labour market so that they are able to fit and be useful to the society where they live.

Employers and the Ability of Graduates

Graduates fail to secure employment opportunities because they lack the skills that employers are looking for. Employers have reported to find some good qualities in graduates such as disciplinary knowledge of what they have studied, however, there are some important soft and hard skills that they lack such as information and technology IT, personal attributes such as reliability, and pragmatic skills such as team work and ability to solve problems.

In a study in some African countries, among other findings it revealed a significant skills discrepancies between what was required by an employer and what a graduate possessed. The discrepancy  was more pronounced in the areas of communication, IT, decision making and critical thinking (Oketch et al. 2014).

Conclusion on Employability Skills

In concluding about this matter, it is important to note that students at university level are expected to demonstrate mastery of certain skills acquired in their programme while studying at university. Students should use the available opportunities, not only relying on their teacher in class, to learn more than taught in class.

We live in the age of the internet, which when well asked, gives almost all needed information about whatever we are looking for. I suggest students should become more aggressive in searching for information and skills needed in the labour market so as to fit and get employed or establish businesses that pay them well.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are academic and employability skills?
2. What are examples of employability skills?
3. What African universities have curriculum for employability skills?
4. How universities in Africa can build jobs skills to youth?
5. Which programmes in African universities offer employable skills to graduates?