Call for TVET colleges to partner with corporate SA to bridge skills gap

Professor and dean of the education faculty at Stellenbosch University, Mbulu Madiba, has said that more needs to be done to address the national skills shortage as the country’s tertiary institutions prepare to open their doors for the 2026 academic year.

South Africa’s technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector faced criticism that its curricula were lagging behind, making it more difficult to keep up with the labour market.

The issue was made worse by a lack of qualified staff and funding constraints at some TVET colleges.

Madiba said there needed to be collaboration with corporate South Africa to ensure courses offered at TVET colleges met labour sector demands.

“What it means is that the curriculum that they are doing is not relevant to the workplace. So, my concern is that instead of colleges just working on curriculum on their own, we need partnership. So, TVET colleges shouldn’t do something that is there, the skills which is not relevant to what is needed in society."

Madiba also said tertiary institutions had to quickly adapt to the disruptions caused by artificial intelligence (AI).

“Now there are quite a number of jobs that now we know that not long this will be done by the computers. AI will do quite a lot of things. Some of the different colleges are still training skills that are already updated. So, what we are saying is that you can still do the same thing, but we need to skill our people so that they know how to use technology,” he added.