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South Africa needs skills
An independent policy think tank is pressurising the government to rethink its immigration policy in an attempt to address South Africa’s skills shortage, writes Ben Lewis
The Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) is one of South Africa's leading policy research and advocacy organisations set up to outline ways in which South Africa can tackle major social and economic challenges.
Its most recent studies have been into the effects that the country's immigration laws are having on its economic development and growth. According to CDEs executive director Ann Bernstein, as the country's economy continues to grow over the next four years it will unmask a crisis – South Africa's desperate shortage of skills that an emerging, export-oriented economy requires. "Although a dramatic upgrading of our educational system is the most vital strategy to combat our skills crisis, we urgently need a short-term solution," says Bernstein.
And, according to CDE, that short-term solution is an immediate, open door, market-driven immigration policy. Says Bernstein, "It will be years, if not decades, before current educational reform and training initiatives bear results on scale and these very initiatives are constrained by a lack of skilled educators, trainers and mentors."
According to CDE, part of the problem is that there is a popular misconception that skilled immigrants 'steal' jobs from South Africans. "The truth is that one qualified immigrant teacher of mathematics or bookkeeping can probably create scores of jobs without in any way reducing the chance of a similarly qualified South African becoming employed. "More importantly," says Bernstein, "every skilled professional directly or indirectly generates additional jobs. And each new skilled immigrant will create new jobs for South Africans simply by buying goods and services and paying taxes."
However, one problem CDE have identified with this solution is the anti-immigrant feeling of some of South Africa's population. A spokesman for the CDE said, "Managing migration effectively will require more facts and fewer myths about immigrants in South Africa".
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13 December 2006