At the lunch counter of a Gaborone supermarket and in a conversation conducted in Setswana, a simple-looking male customer buying a plate of mokwetjepe (boiled beef seasoned with salt only) asks the female server to put in pieces with “mahihiri.”
“What’s mahihiri?” she asks in a somewhat mocking voice.
“Cartilage,” responds the customer responds, code-switching.
At a point where it becomes clear that the server is also unfamiliar with the English word, the customer sets about pointing at the meat pieces he wants through the sneeze guard.
This little, seemingly meaningless anecdote illustrates a broader, more profound point that speakers at Botswana’s first labour conference made which was organised by the Institute for Labour and Employment Studies (ILES) and held at the Gaborone International Convention Centre. That point is that increasingly nowadays, young people already in the labour force and those intending to join it, lack what are called “soft skills.” The latter are defined as personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. The following have been identified as some of the soft skills: attitude, communication, emotional intelligence, creative thinking, work ethic, teamwork, networking, decision making, positivity, time management, motivation, flexibility, problem-solving, critical thinking, and conflict resolution.
The mokwetjepe server has a rotten attitude and lacks basic vocabulary for a very popular product (meat) that she sells every day. How do you sell a traditional meat dish, not know what mahihiri (the more common singular form – lehihiri – is grammatically incorrect because the word exists in the plural only) is and chortle at use of the word?
Speaking at the ILES conference, Professor Happy Siphambe, an Economics lecturer at the University of Botswana, said that there is “lack of coordination” between the demand and supply sides in Botswana’s labour market. He added that while university programmes may be “technically sound” and students may pass, the latter generally have low competencies, are not job-ready and most importantly, are so described by employers that Siphambe said he has interacted with. Those employers lamented the lack of soft skills in the graduates and the skills that Siphambe mentioned were emotional intelligence, critical thinking, communication skills and teamwork. With precise regard to the latter, Siphambe said that some graduates “can’t work as a team.” He expressed worry that this situation will worsen on account of public health guidelines that have been introduced as a result of Covid-19.
Germany has one of the best education systems in the world and among speakers at the ILES conference was Thilo Schöne, who is the Resident Representative of Frederick Ebert Stiftung Botswana. The latter is a non-profit German foundation “committed to the advancement of both socio-political and economic development in the spirit of social democracy through civic education, research and international cooperation” Schöne defined education in a much more expansive sense than is the norm, noting that education is more than just a university degree. Within such definition, he stressed the importance of soft skills in both job training and employment.
Generally, the ILES conference revisited the soft-skills for as long as it lasted and there was consensus that graduates need to be equipped with such skills in order that they can have a fighting chance in the world of work.
Where employers find themselves stuck with employees who lack the appropriate soft skills, there is desperate need to provide the requisite training. However, as Dichaba Molobe from Business Botswana observed, government processes impede skills development. He said that while companies pay “a lot of money” as training levy, they find it difficult to get it back from the Vocational Training Fund to train their employees. Introduced in 2008, the training levy is based on an employer’s turnover and is sustained through levy imposed by the Vocational Training (Levy) Order as well as money appropriated by parliament and that received from any other sources. Employers who have incurred training costs are entitled to reimbursement from the Vocational Training Fund, which is administered by the Human Resource Development Council.
Interestingly, the alarm about the soft-skills gap in varsity graduates was sounded six years ago by a former UB lecturer and amplified a Bretton Woods institution.
Writing in a tertiary education publication called University World News, Dr. Sheldon Weeks stated that Botswana graduates are “weak in language and social skills, numeracy, and attitudes.” The quote in question occurred in the context of an interview that Weeks did with then HRDC Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Patrick Molutsi. The latter didn’t make the statement himself but the author (Weeks) did as part of an editorialising pattern that recurs throughout an article headlined “Challenges, achievements in steering a tertiary sector.”
An American educationist who worked at UB for more than two decades, Weeks was more than qualified to make such analysis. He served as the Foundation Dean at the School of Graduate Studies between 1996 and 2002. His teaching career had started at Harvard University in the United States where he obtained his doctoral degree in education. As Director of Evaluation Team Services Botswana, Weeks carried out consultancy services for the review of the grant/loan scheme for the Department of Student Placement and Welfare which has been renamed the Department of Tertiary Education Funding.
Weeks’ statement about Botswana’s graduates lacking appropriate soft skills would be exhumed and republished by the World Bank when it put together a report on Botswana’s poverty. The Bank used the statement in the context of illustrating a point about the Botswana’s educational outcomes not being commensurate with its level of financial investment in the sector.
Similar concern about the diminution in soft skills was expressed by some speakers at an engineering forum that was hosted by the Engineers Registration Board in March this year. It is unclear how much of this diminution is a result of the deprioritisation of liberal-arts education but such deprioritisation was always going to have adverse consequences. As the traditional academic programme in western higher education, liberal arts education offers an expansive intellectual grounding in all kinds of humanistic inquiry. On the basis of the latter, it puts emphasis on soft skills like research, critical thinking, leadership, team work, writing, and communication.
However, the advent of what was called “the information superhighway” at the turn of the 21st century and would be called the Fourth Industrial Revolution today, led to the reduction in status of liberal arts education. As a matter of fact, in 2007, a man who was not only Botswana’s president but was also UB Chancellor talked down liberal arts education during a public lecture at the university. Addressing himself to one particular group, President Festus Mogae added that were far too many political scientists with whom “you will have to compete when you finish your junior degrees.” He proposed that a more productive course of action would be to choose more marketable disciples like nursing, medicine and engineering.
That exact sentiment was echoed by Molepolole North MP, Oabile Regoeng, when he contributed to a parliamentary debate last year. He lamented the continuance of educational programmes “that are taking us nowhere” and noted that while Botswana has “so many political scientists” but not enough medical doctors, UB continues to churn out Political Science graduates. As worrisome, he added, was that the university continues to offer Public Administration when “we need engineers and psychologists.”
Oddly, the solution to the soft-skills gap is being sought outside indigenous culture in what remains a conservative society. Nowhere in the formal education system do students learn indigenous-culture decorum. However, they end up in workplaces where those they interact with in the line of duty expect customer service that incorporates such decorum. A huge soft-skills gap among the youth generally is cluelessness about proper greeting forms in Setswana and that the use of words like “akere” within certain inter-generational context is extremely rude. More worrisome though is that some young people wilfully reject this decorum because it is “ancient.” The latter attitude doesn’t consider the fact that most of the people who make hiring decisions grew up in a Botswana where high premium was placed on indigenous-culture decorum.
