【Close】TICADVI Follow Up・International Symposium “Industrial Skills Development for the Sustainable Growth in Africa”

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which was adopted at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, emphasizes the importance of education and capacity development, in various sections of the SDGs , as the precondition for sustainable development, economically, environmentally, and socially. 6th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD VI), which was held in August 2016, also highlighted the importance of industrial human resource development. However, skills demands from the labor market are constantly changing and it is a major challenge how to capture the demands in timely and appropriate manner and to flexibly prepare workers with appropriate skills.

Given this situation, Nagoya University and JICA will hold a symposium and discuss about the issues and prospects of industrial skills development in Africa in relation to the human resource demands from the Japanese private companies that are investing in Africa. The panelists are invited from the African countries which have been experiencing or carrying out major reforms of the training systems; namely, Ethiopia and South Africa. From Japan, JICA’s current cooperation and challenge in this field will be presented, while the discussant will provide the private sector perspective.

Background:
Since the late 2000s, economies of many Sub-Sahara African countries have achieved remarkable progress, backed by the favorable conditions of resource export. However, in the last couple of years, the international demands for natural resources have reduced which resulted in the slowing down of economic growth in Africa. The Economies dependent on the external demands for resource are unstable. Also, exports of resources with little value-added processing tend not to lead to the establishment of strong domestic bases of industries. A lack of strong industry also inhibits growth of employment, which would distribute the benefit of growth among wider population.

For sustainable industrial growth in tandem with expanded employment and poverty reduction, development of workforce with high and relevant skills and knowledge is indispensable. In addition, for overseas private companies (including those from Japan), availability of human resources with foundational capacities who are ready for further training is one of the key determining factors for investment, together with physical infrastructure and stable governance.

14:00-14:15　Opening remarks
Takao Toda, Vice President for Human Security and Global Health
JICA
Sanae Ito, Dean, Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University
Atsushi Tsutsumi, Research Supervisor (Low Carbon Society / Energy), SATREPS, Professor, University of Tokyo

14:15-14:30　Overview of the issue
Shoko Yamada, Professor, Nagoya University
“Challenges of formulating skills to meet changing industry demands: issues and prospects in today’s Africa”

14:30-15:45　Presentations

15:45-16:00　Coffee Break

16:00-17:00　Panel Discussion
“Skills development: the crossroad of issues on employment, poverty reduction, education, and industry”

17:00-18:00　Post-Symposium Break・Networking

Shoko Yamada, Professor, Nagoya University
Hiroyuki Tomita, Director, Team II Private Sector Development Group, Industrial Development and Public Policy Department, JICA
Lemma Teshome, State Minister, Ministry of Education, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Julie Reddy, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, South Africa Qualification Authority, Republic of South Africa
Keiichi Shirato, Chief Analyst, Middle East & Africa Dept., Mitsui Global Strategic Studies Institute

JICA Research Institute (E.Sakamaki / W.Kubota)
JICA Africa Department, Planning and TICAD Process Division (I.Enatsu)

TEL：03-3269-2359　E-mail：ditas-rsunit@jica.go.jp

This event has ended.