Sam Ikeotuonye
Abuja — The Sub-Saharan African Skills and Apprenticeship Stakeholders Network, SASASNET, has tasked African countries on the development of skills qualification framework to aid labour migration across the continent.
The group made the recommendation in a communique at the end of its two-day meeting in the Federal Capital, Abuja.
It recommended that each member country should develop a National Skills Qualifications Framework with adequate provisions for the informal sector and that SSANET should collaborate with World Skills to promote competition and talent hunt amongst African youths.
It called on African countries to “integrate NEET (Not in Education, Employment and Training) into the apprenticeship training programme to promote inclusivity.”
The communique, signed by the Secretary-General of the organisation, Ousman Sillah, said lack of national skills qualifications framework had made recognition of skills acquired in the informal sector in the sub-Saharan African countries difficult and had caused absence of opportunities for skilled labour migration across the continent.
It harped on the need for the organisation to work and change the negative public perception on the value of skills and apprenticeship on the continent, adding that the Dangote Refinery in Nigeria has engaged over 11,000 workforce from India while Nigerian youths lacked the required skills to be engaged.
“(We emphasise)The need for SASASNET to engage in vigorous public awareness and engagement to change the negative perception of the public on the value of skills and apprenticeship;
“The Dangote Refinery in Nigeria under construction has engaged over 11,000 workforce from India, while our youths lack the required skills to be engaged; Africa should avoid a repeat of the same in the upcoming $25 billion Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline traversing the Gulf of Guinea to Europe; the absence of National Occupational Standards in many countries,” the communique read in parts.
Also, it was resolved at the two-day meeting that the secretariats of the body would be in Nigeria and that its next general assembly would hold next year in Kenya.
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