Conceptualising regional skills ecosystems: Reflections on four African cases

Volker Wedekind,Jo‐Anna Russon,Simon Mcgrath,Luke Metelerkamp,David Monk,Presha Ramsarup

doi:10.1111/ijtd.12251

Abstract

AbstractIn this article we address the debate on regional skills formation systems in Africa. We draw on the social ecosystems model (SEM) developed by Hodgson and Spours to analyse data from four case studies that reflect the complexities of African economies, rural and urban, formal and informal. The SEM model helps us focus on the three dimensions of a strong skills ecosystem: collaboration between a range of actors, key institutions and system leaders within the region (the horizontal); top‐down policies, regulations, and funding streams that enable or constrain the regional skills ecosystem (the vertical); and the points where these two interact, often through mediation activities. In the case of the last of these three, our cases point to the importance of nurturing organisations which can provide SEM leadership, particularly in more fragile ecosystems. Yet, in none of the cases, are public vocational institutions playing the strong anchor role envisaged in the model. The significance of the paper lies in three ways it develops the SEM in relation to regional skills ecosystems. First, we problematise the notion of a facilitatory state and place it within wider national and global webs of power. Second, we insist that the local or regional is always embedded in and networked into myriad national and international levels. This requires a more complex understanding of how social skills ecosystems operate. Third, the notion of an anchor institution requires further elaboration. In most social ecosystems these institutions need to be built or strengthened and a clearer understanding is required of the processes of institutionalisation and what mechanisms make it possible to build this capacity and sustain it over time.

Highlights

Across Africa, vocational education and training (VET) is viewed by policy makers and international development agencies as a solution to pressing social and economic concerns
Reflecting parallel governance turns in international development and VET policies in the 1990s (McGrath & Lugg, 2012), policy approaches focus on getting national skills systems ‘right’ at the expense of thinking about local and regional labour markets and skills formation systems
This was informed by a number of critiques of traditional VET systems as being focused on the formal economy, insensitive to local context, and unable to address the challenges emerging from climate breakdown, new technologies and migration (UNESCO, 2016)

Summary

Introduction

Across Africa, vocational education and training (VET) is viewed by policy makers and international development agencies as a solution to pressing social and economic concerns. We draw on the work of Spours and colleagues (Grainger & Spours, 2018; Hodgson & Spours, 2016, 2018; Spours, 2019) and their social ecosystem model (SEM) as this foregrounds a more regional, place-based model of skills development Whilst this literature emerged in the Anglophone developed world (USA, Australia, UK) and initially in the most economically ‘advanced’ regions therein, we apply the SEM model as an analytical tool to the very different contexts of Uganda and South Africa. Their worlds of work are characterised by large urban informal and rural subsistence economies (alongside a substantial formal sector, both urban and rural, in the case of South Africa). Their respective states function in ways that are very distinct from each other and from the contexts in which skills ecosystems models were developed

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion