VET Africa 4.0: Reducing Inequality And Enhancing Sustainability Through Skills Development

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A new approach to vocational education and training (VET) in Africa is needed to address the insights of Agenda 2030 that development cannot have meaning without concentrated attention on overturning complex disadvantage and securing environmental sustainability, as well as on economic growth and employment.Since the African independence wave began 60 years ago, VET in Africa has gone through three phases, reflecting wider development orthodoxies of modernisation, basic needs and neoliberalism. With a new UNESCO VET vision and the SDGs, it is time to look at what a fourth phase of African VET theory and practice might look like that can address not just economic considerations but also issues of equity/inclusion and environmental sustainability.To do this we draw on three main theoretical traditions: i) a political economy of development approach that combines learning from evolutionary, institutional and complexity economics with the existing political economy of skills tradition; ii) a new wave of human development and capabilities research that combines the capabilities approach with critical sociological traditions and applies this to VET; iii) accounts of skills development for sustainable development that emphasise the need for pro-poor and community-owned approaches to green skills. The fourth part of our thinking toolkit is provided by the methodological approach of realist evaluation, focused on how to ascertain what different stakeholders think works (and doesn't work) in each case study setting, when, where and why, and for whom.We will use these four parts of our toolkit to examine four case studies:1. Uganda - attempts to build local skills and employment into a major oil and gas project (Hoima)2. Uganda - youth-entrepreneurship and community development in a post-conflict setting (Gulu) 3. South Africa - major infrastructure development initiative in Durban as part of larger ambitions regarding an economic corridor from the port to the industrial heartland of Gauteng4. South Africa - rural, community-driven green skills (E Cape)These provide a range of contexts in which skills development takes place within complex skills and work ecosystems. These include massive infrastructure projects, both urban and rural; green skills initiatives alongside continued developments in extractives; and small community projects, including in post-conflict contexts. They also all have important and complex dynamics of gender and economic inequality.We will answer four research questions:1. Is there evidence that different emergent approaches to skills for development in Africa are viable, both at the project level and, potentially, at larger scale?2. What do different stakeholders think works (and doesn't work) in such initiatives, when, where and why, and for whom?3. To what extent do the different interventions offer a fruitful approach for promoting decent work and sustainable livelihoods for all, with a particular emphasis on meeting the needs of those facing multiple forms of disadvantage? What enables and/or constrains this?4. Are skills interventions such as these capable of overcoming the old productivist approach so as to address the rising challenges of environmental sustainability? By operating at both theoretical and applied levels across multiple cases, this research will make a significant contribution to addressing the grand challenge of successful VET reform. It will produce strong academic research, built through continuous engagement with stakeholders, that will be communicated in appropriate ways to academic, policy, practitioner and community audiences. This will enable the project team to offer new practical insights into how better to support VET system transformation through an ecosystem approach. This will result in new knowledge that can contribute to meeting the needs of the most marginalised, national development needs and the global SDG agenda.