The continuous development of skills across all sectors of the economy will aid Zimbabwe's National Development agenda, Minister of Skills Audit and Development Paul Mavima has said.
The ultimate objective of the Ministry of Skills Audit and Development is to make sure that they are moving the country in accordance with Vision 2030.
Addressing stakeholders during a workshop last week, Minister Mavima said there was need to capacitate training institutions to produce well-equipped professionals in various fields.
"The workshop itself comes from the realisation that our economy is suffering from acute skills shortages, even though the country has a huge population of educated people who are unemployed, especially the youths," he said.
"There's also a redundancy of some of the available skills. People have gone to school, they have certain skills, but they are idle, and they need to develop the required skills, and then see how we can utilise those skills that are currently redundant.
'You know that we have NDS 1 now, which is going to run until 2025, but from 2025 to 2030, we have NDS 2. So, against this background, my ministry was created to bridge these gaps and ensure that all training institutions are informed and capacitated to produce skilled professionals.
"The skills shortage points to the mismatch between what is being produced by our training institutions, these training institutions are both public and private, and some are even informal, but the informal tends to be on target because they are training people to work right there and produce right there."
Minister Mavima said Zimbabwe's dream should be more ambitious than that of America.
He said the country could achieve high levels of economic and social prosperity because it has the highest resource endowment per capita than any other nation.
Zimbabwe, Minister Mavima said, had the potential to attain and even surpass set developmental targets of NDS1 and Vision 2030.
"We are a country that can easily surpass the current vision that we have set for ourselves, which is upper middle-income status," he said.
"But in order for us to do that, we really need to define collaboratively together as a society to say this is our dream. And also to agree on several ethical commitments to say now we are working towards realising this dream.
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"Part of one of the variables towards achieving that is making sure that we have the skills set in the various sectors and in various industries that allow us to achieve that dream. Our current process of consultation is basically to say let's codify, one - the shortages that we have. And secondly, the programmes that we need to put in place at various levels to achieve those skill sets."
Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Skills Audit and Development Ambassador Rudo Chitiga elaborated on the vision of the ministry and how it was going to benefit the nation at large.
"Human capital development is the engine for economic and social transformation," she said. "The vision of the Ministry is for a skilled population to transform the country and communities to create an empowered and prosperous nation."
Ambassador Chitiga said the ministry was committed to transforming the skills development ecosystem, stimulating and sustaining economic growth, poverty reduction and improving the living standards of all Zimbabweans.
