TANZANIA Vice President Dr Philip Mpango says the private sector is a key beneficiary of human capital development efforts as he calls upon delegates attending the ongoing ministerial technical session of the Heads of State Human Capital Summit (HCS) in Dar es Salaam to contemplate how it can be engaged to unlock human capital potential in Africa.
Delivering his opening speech at the well-attended event, the VP says participants should consider how the private sector could be motivated to actively collaborate with governments as co-sponsors and co-producers of quality human capital.
He admits that there is a limited fiscal space of most African countries as he tasks delegates to look at both regional and multilateral financial Institutions needs to do more to devise innovative financing solutions in support of Africa’s drive to accelerate human capital development.
“Human capital investment is long term in nature and thus requires low-cost financing with long-term maturity,” says Dr Mpango as he adds: I firmly believe that our training institutions, being key players in human capital development, can and should help the Continent bolster local capacities to efficiently manage and exploit our natural resource endowment.”
According to Dr Mpango, it is an irony that the continent spends much of its financial resources to import knowledge for harnessing our own natural resource wealth. African training institutions should therefore reposition themselves and collaborate to produce home grown solutions to Africa’s challenges.
Explaining how his country is doing to address human capital related challenges; Dr Mpango says Tanzania is currently reviewing the Education and Training Policy 2014, Education Act, and the Curricula with the aim of improving the education system to cater for talent development, hands-on skills as well as building competencies, positive thinking and acquaint graduates with cutting-edge technology.
“The review is further expected to increase youth productivity, competitiveness in the labour market as well as preparing graduates to become job creators and not job seekers. We are embarking on extending Technical and Vocational training centres to all the 184 districts; and Efforts are also being directed at embracing learning, digital revolution and scaling up social service delivery and rural electrification to reach out to all villages,” he adds.
Additionally, Dr Mpango says his country is expanding ICT infrastructure development, taking advantage of a rapid digital uptake in the country, evidenced by the increased proportion of adult individuals using the internet, from 36.5 percent in 2015 to 49 percent in 2021.
The summit, which started on Monday, has brought together various leaders across the continent to come up with solutions regarding challenges facing human capital development in Africa.
The summit is being hyped in the social media outlets with hashtags; #InvestInPeople #HumanCapitalSummit.
