Africa-Press – Lesotho. Every country’s development objectives are to eradicate extreme poverty and increase the living standards for all individuals. Achieving these objectives requires
among others, improving access to high quality service and recruiting educated workers. Increasing skilled jobs to accommodate human capital to its potential reduces
skill mismatch between workers and jobs, by so doing unemployment levels and extreme poverty is put under control. Skill mismatch has become a global trend and a challenge for most countries
and Lesotho is no exception. It affects all layers of society, from the productivity and efficiency of businesses to the current, and mostly welfare of
the youth. The competitiveness of the market is put at stake and so is the development of the country. Skill mismatch is defined as the gap between individuals’ job skills and the
demands of the job market. This imbalance is due to characteristics of employees, like level or type of education, or skills that does not fit into the workplace requirements and responsibilities.
All these mismatches have their own characteristics as to how they either affect the supply side or demand side in the labour market. The skills mismatch can reflect increases
during an economic downturn, and declines again during the recovery. It may result in a persistent existence of a pool of unemployed workers with relatively high vacancy rate and can therefore reflect prolonged labour market
matching inefficiencies leading to structural unemployment. The world economic forum’s human capital index, which measures the extent to which countries and economies optimise their human capital through education and
skills development, finds that the sub Saharan Africa, on average currently only captures 55 percent of its full human capital potential as compared to the
global average of 65 percent. Lesotho falls behind as it ranges 52 percent. The accumulation of human capital is the engine of continuous economic growth.
Lesotho has failed desperately to take advantage of its high population as most of its working force’s rates are much higher than any sector with its pyramid shape: broader
from the base but gets narrower as it goes higher through age. Productivity is not maximised potentially. Lesotho is under-prepared for the forthcoming disruption
to jobs and skills brought by fourth industrial revolution, as most of its economic well being is informal. Lesotho’s capacity to adapt and exposure of
future jobs index ranges from 0.4 to 0.5 (scale of 0 to 1). This means the skills lose their value when labour markets demand changes and resources are
not exploited to their full capacity. The impact therefore leads to depreciation of skills and by that we can see that many skills are left obsolete some underutilised or over-utilised causing a huge mismatch of skills in the
country. In the Executive Opinion Survey on quality of Africa’s education systems, Lesotho is placed at 3.8 (world average with quality rating, from 1 to 7(best)), this
depicts that we are far better than 18 African countries but Lesotho fails to accommodate all its human capital in the labour market. The fact is, measures
were taken to facilitate access to finance by business enterprises with commercial banks on establishment of a M50 million in May 2012 through the Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC),
but looking at the number of graduates each year and the necessary requirements that hinder the youth to apply for such funding, this also depicts that young
people are disproportionally and experience high rates of unemployment and low access to earnings, skill mismatch affects the unemployment rates, Since there
is forever-growing need of technological progress, as it is estimated that 7500 graduates are left unemployed every year in Lesotho, the question is why so
much over education when policy advice emphasizes raising education levels? Furthermore it brings effects of poverty; poverty levels have been on the rise
in the Lesotho from 1986 to 2010 with 49.4 percent to 59.7 percent respectively and kept worsening to 61.3 percent in 2002 as by the World Bank using poverty
headcount. As technology increases rapidly, individuals need time to adjust to those changes and causing short skills mismatches but if the gap continues to widen then the
long run skill mismatch creates actual economic and social losses. Skills mismatch then leads to depreciation of skills due to loss of jobs by rigidness
to adapting to technology, which result in even more large differences of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. Additionally, prolonged unemployment and
decrease in the households income arises. Only skills in equilibrium seem to survive during periods of low aggregate productivity and economic downturns
(such as recessions, pandemics (for example; COVID-19)) while large numbers of
people are left unemployed. Skill mismatch has serious implications on firms, individuals and the economy; affecting wages, work productivity and human capital therefore, skill mismatch
should be observed because of unemployment. Lesotho‘s labour force has been increasing significantly over the years from 1990 to 2019 by approximately
696,000 and 974,814 respectively. With these high numbers creation of jobs for
the future have to be implemented so as to accommodate the future human capital and avoid emergence of high unemployment levels. Low skilled workers can find compensation through gaining more education to easily
find employment. However in the case of Lesotho, development of skills through education and training in colleges and universities has been achieved with
levels of 80 percent in adult literacy rate. The question is why so high youth unemployment rates? Are the courses provided at high learning institutions not
fit for demands of labour market? If yes, the National Manpower Development Secretariat (NMDS) should invest in human capital by sponsoring only those
courses available in the labour market and also those which will be on high demand in the future. Shortfall in skills in regions of Sub- Saharan Africa and south Asia is driven by the
informal economy. Lesotho has about 34.93 percent informal employment. This remains a challenge as most of the people in these market lack training and
skills to give productivity in the economy. Most of the studies of skill mismatch focus on developed countries and European countries a few of them are
in low-middle income countries, therefore, it remains a challenge in using the same policies believed could curb skill mismatch in countries like Lesotho.
Lack of available data in Lesotho hinders the study of mismatch and its characteristics to be fully observed. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a core tool to realizing Sustainable
Development Goal (SDG).8, which aims to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for
all. Upgrading skills in the informal economy and reducing jobs and skills mismatch in the economy are crucial to include new entrants in the labour market
directly in formal employment. Sustainable development goal.4 is also directly concerned with the issue of skills mismatch, with its reference to relevant skills
for work. By 2030 Lesotho ought to have achieved increasingly on matching skills to the youth and promoting entrepreneurship levels. The policies and strategies the government of Lesotho is using to achieve these goals are less
efficient, as youth unemployment keeps rising faster than the national unemployment each year: the national unemployment rate was 37.43 percent and 23.41 percent in 1991 and 2019 respectively; the youth unemployment was 50.70
percent 1991 and in 2019 it was 33.67 percent. The nature of unemployment of Lesotho is chronic and prolonged therefore the markets are insolvent to demand high
supply of labour. Poor capacity in terms of the absence of adequate skills suitable institutions undermines development planning and administration. The governance of Lesotho
needs to first be improved through the effective administration and accountable bureaucracy. Enhancing skills will be challenging if only that is not met.
Retaining trained individuals is more important than merely training individuals in bureaucracy, the World Bank supports that by stating that Lesotho needs a
better paid, more effective and perhaps a small bureaucracy. However, Lesotho seems to be failing as the civil service reforms has been on the policy agenda
for more than three decades now. Through this it becomes difficult for Lesotho in addressing the issue of skill mismatch and its impacts in the labour markets
and the economy as large. Corruption and instability of Lesotho is creating even more spill-over effects by widening the gap that skills mismatch creates in the economy.
In Lesotho the governing body chooses people of their “own favour” in crucial places of administration; for example, public-secretary and ministers. These positions are crucial as
most of them do not have skills matching that specific job. Over-changing governing bodies during a short period: during a period from 2010 to 2020 Lesotho has changed power for more than three consecutive times this makes it
even more difficult in adopting policies that can help the country curb measures of skill mismatch since every governing body comes up with its new policies when in power.
Nepotism does not guarantee that the skills of the person recruited would be matched to their jobs. The increase of government spending on education can be considered as an investment
in human capital but due to unavailable markets for the graduates since the country is not able to find matching jobs, for skills supplied in colleges and
universities in the country. Skill mismatches and lack of entrepreneurship programmes for growth-oriented businesses limit the competitiveness of Lesotho’s
private sector. For example, no institution in the country offers training in sewing machine repair which is a skill in high demand in apparel industry but
also in some households. Attention needs to be paid to vocational training, as the country does not have institutions that develop the kinds of skills that
are required in the economy. The strong negative relationship between skill mismatch and labour productivity via allocative efficiency channels means that
when determining policies in curbing skill mismatch, policymakers should concentrate on factors that impose problems on the efficient reallocation of labour.
Recommendations such as access to formal capital, better organisation and formal training of street vendors by stakeholders can slow down the gaps of mismatch and negative
effects in the economy of Lesotho. There has to be improved labour markets in relevance of higher education by aligning teaching and research activities at
the universities with market signals. More-over, the government of Lesotho needs to implement structures that help in facilitating easier access to information on job availability as it is the
largest employer in Lesotho. Finally, policy makers for the government of Lesotho can also facilitate incentives such as tax reduction to encourage firms to offer internships to the youth.
Mamotena Molomo is a 4th year Student at
the National University of Lesotho, studying Bachelor of Economics.
