In a not-too-distant future when tourism will replace mining as the main forex earner, a chef will be almost as important to the national economy as a mining engineer presently is.
The problem though is that although a majority of Batswana tend to gravitate toward white-collar jobs, this is the one (literally white-collar job) that is being overlooked. The result has been that Botswana has a serious manpower shortage of chefs.
In outlining a strategy for the development of the hospitality and catering skills, a Botswana Training Authority (BOTA) consultancy report says that the “focus of this strategy is chef training, since this is the area of skills shortage, requiring the development of additional higher level programmes and expanded facilities.”
The report notes that while chef training is offered at some government training institutions “this training is all low level.” At the time of the time of the study, up in Maun, one private provider who was offering low level training was planning to expand as a training hotel but “that was short-lived due to complaints that students were being used as cheap labour, and the lodge is now no longer used primarily as a training facility, but only as an employer for attachments.”
In the main, the report suggests that “hospitality and chef training is a key area for enhancing the tourism industry, which in turn is a key strategic growth area for Botswana.” It goes farther to state that the importance of tourism and hospitality is widely recognised by strategy and policy makers, and development of the tourism industry as a pillar in the conceptual frameworks for export development, foreign investment, and transport as well as the medical tourism concept of the Health Hub.
“Currently an Education Hub consultancy has developed a case for foreign investment in a privately owned lodge school in Maun and a hotel school and profiles are being developed to attract investors. Key points made in these profiles include current low skills of workers in these fields, the very high service expectation of visitors, and strong demand for highly skilled workers now and in the future,” the report says.
In the final analysis, the consultants make some recommendations of how the government can fill this skills gap: ensuring existing certificate; advanced certificate and diploma level qualifications that are aligned with the national qualifications framework; developing modules to offer as short courses for industry and the public like cocktails, confectionary, food and wine matching, international cuisine, camp cooking, junior chefs; developing recognition of prior learning processes and entry with credit regulations so that cooks with no or low qualifications can enter higher level programmes with credit; offering incentives to attract highly qualified staff, with extensive industry experience; investigating implications of offering optional City and Guilds (or other internationally recognised) external assessment for chefs so that graduates can exit with internationally recognised chef qualifications; offering modules in the evenings/weekends so that full time employees can attend; recovering costs by running training schools as fully operational well marketed tourist facilities; developing retail outlets to sell food produced by students in training; and, raising money and promoting training by offering catering at events like careers expo, cultural and sporting events.
