(From AllAfrica.com) Accra — Mining giant AngloGold Ashanti has admitted first time since its operation in Ghana that it had not been good listeners with respect to its business culture, traditions and way of doing business in the country.

"We have previously made the mistake of underestimating local skills, while not looking to support our high level skills with the appropriate global operating and technical skills.

The net impact is we have too many expatriate working in areas where local Ghanaians should have the requisite skills and we are short where we see very specific global technical skill requirements," said Group Chief Executive of AngloGold, Mark Cutifani.

Cutifani was delivering the first in the series of annual AngloGold Ashanti Lectures on Business in Africa at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon.

In an interview with The Chronicle, Cutifani noted that it was imperative for governments and its local partners to consider as a priority area, an investment in local needs and allocate capital to help support the infrastructural development in those areas of investments.

"When governments look to partnering us in investments we must first understand what the local needs are, and allocate capital to help support the infrastructural development within those areas and also do more for the development of new industries that can live beyond mining."

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Tags: ghana, africa, skills, development, public sector

Categories: International | News

Sokoto State government recently embarked on a recruitment drive to admit 10,000 youths for the second phase of its skill acquisition programme. The initiative is part of government’s determination to curb restiveness, crime and poverty in the state. MOHAMMED AMINU writes:

Poverty can be traced within the context of contradiction between the resources available at the disposal of an individual and the demands and conditions of his environment. A large number of youths in Sokoto are unskilled, poor and unemployable. The skill acquisition programme set up by the government is an instrument of empowerment that seeks to provide the youths with skills required for sound social living and to enable them become more functional in the society.

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Tags: nigeria, training, skills gap, africa

Categories: International | News

OVER 1,000 rural businesswomen have been trained in entrepreneurial, management and leadership skills.

Twenty-one selected women groups from across the country also got business counselling and advisory services.

The training was conducted under Enterprise Uganda’s Strengthening Women Entrepreneurs Project (SWEP), a report indicated.

“The training has improved the operational efficiency of the women-owned enterprises and increased revenue collection,” the report said.

It added that household incomes of the rural women, purchasing power and jobs had increased because of the women’s involvement in economic activities.

“This has improved Uganda’s balance of payments because of increased export of locally-produced goods. This has also improved food security.”

Enterprise Uganda said as a result of the training, four women groups were engaged in agro-processing, while seven were involved in crop husbandry. “Seven others are involved animal husbandry, while three are engaged in making textiles, arts and crafts.

“We conducted business health checks on all the groups to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats,” reads the report, adding, “The common challenges we discovered included limited entrepreneurial skills, lack of capital, weak group management structures and leadership, lack of strategic planning and market access.”

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Tags: skills, leadership development, uganda, africa, global business, gender issues

Categories: News

(From The Times) Global research commissioned by KPMG reveals that the economic slowdown has cooled the overheated project market to some extent, especially for large physical projects.

But the research finds that there are still fundamental problems with undercapacity.

“The performance of many projects has not been good as a result,” said Jeff Shaw, director for major projects at KPMG. “There is a shortage of skilled project managers globally, which has been alleviated only temporarily during the recession.

“We cannot rely on importing skills and it’s still expensive to cherry- pick, so we have to develop home-grown project managers.

“There is considerable concern about the industry’s ability to deliver on infrastructure requirements around the world in the medium term,” Shaw added.

“Our advice is that if projects repeatedly form part of your core business you ought to build a core capacity to have internal skills to deliver. Then, outsource to supplement your capacity during peaks as a one-off.

“Government is a particularly significant problem area; our research shows that, globally, 70% of infrastructure providers (whoever feeds into major projects) cite a lack of government effectiveness as a major constraint on delivery.”

Shaw said this was not the case in South Africa alone — in the US the rate was 72%.

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Tags: skills, skills shortage, south africa, global business, africa

Categories: News

(From the Dispatch Online) ONE of the major challenges that South Africa will need to overcome to become a competitive player in the global marketplace is the need to focus on improving and retaining those with the necessary skills sets.

So said East London Industrial Development Zone’s chief executive officer, Simphiwe Kondlo, at the Walter Sisulu University’s (WSU) business breakfast in East London last week.

“There are three main factors that international players look at before even considering investing in a country, that is the regulatory environment, the infrastructure platform and the human capital investment,” he said.

Focusing on human capital, Kondlo said many companies were not only assessing the diversity and depth of certain skill sets, but were also focusing on the attitudes and values of the work force.

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Tags: training, skills gap, south africa, africa

Categories: News