EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report provides an analysis of ten African countries’ macroeconomic indicators, evaluation of their industries (with a focus on the manufacturing sector and its most important sub-sectors), and collection of evaluated needed professions and skills. The ten selected countries are Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Kenya, Uganda, Angola, Botswana, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria.

The paper aims to outline the needed skills in different countries to meet the demand of the current and future industry development and landscape. The research was based on the following thesis: “E-Skills in Africa – Analysis of needed skills and training in promising countries.” The main goal of this project report is to provide Festo Didactic with an overview of the required skill sets in the various markets to penetrate those with appropriate technical training.

Firstly, a macroeconomic analysis comprising following variables was conducted: the position of each respective country in the EMP Index (Educational Market Potential, an index developed by the E&I students in 2019), leading indicators such as HDI (Human Development Index), Government Expenditure on R&D, as well as lagging indicators such as Years of Schooling and Government Expenditure on Education (amongst others).

Secondly, a sector overview was carried out, including the distribution and development of the gross domestic product (GDP) across the three main sectors (services, industry, and agriculture), in addition to a comparison of the sub-sectors contributing to GDP.

Thirdly, after examining the manufacturing sector and its sub-sectors, the three most important contributing sub-sectors were further investigated, with the addition of one additional aspiring sub-sector. Moreover, important players operating in the respective sub-sectors were identified, together with their revenues and numbers of employees.

In the last step, we studied demanded vacant job positions and identified the skill sets and required competencies for future jobs in the relevant subsectors. In the end, we evaluated how Festo Didactic could meet those demands by focusing on promising jobs in each analyzed sub- sector.

Results show that among all ten examined countries, the five most important sub-sectors of the manufacturing sector are: Food and Beverages, Automotive, Petroleum and Chemicals, Metal and Machinery and Textiles. To mention a few of the most relevant skills to acquire: the ability to work with autonomous robots, machine maintenance, prototype building, malfunction detection analysis, coordination of departments (amongst many others).

Therefore, it is recommended for Festo Didactic to develop technical training for the skills mentioned above to provide the market with skills that are needed for future professions and gain a bigger stake in the technical education business.

The report also investigates the fact that the analysis conducted has limitations. Some of the limitations include: different data sources leading to varying calculations of economic values, outdated data, the dependency of demanded professions on the job ads published and scarcity of online published professions and vacant positions.

Cooperation Partner

• Festo Didactic SE
  Rechbergstraße 3
  73770 Denkendorf
  Germany

Contact Person

• Dr. Nader-Iman Imani
  FESTO Didacti SE
  Executive Vice President Global Education

Student team

• Lubna Al-Duri

• Samuel Karaba

• Anna Kirnbauer

• Michael Leopolder

• Martin Meister

• Nicholas Pöllinger

• Lilien Schneider

• Karl-Peter Strohmeier

Project-Manager

• Shetfi Mladenovska