Afrika: Berufliche Bildung ist essenziell

African countries would do well to follow the example of East Asian developmental states and industrial countries such as Germany which determinedly focused on vocational, artisan and technical training which they tightly linked to their countries' industrial plans.

As the debate over how to decolonise education across the continent starts anew - which echoes a similar debate immediately after the first generation of African independence - education based on an industrialisation path should be the new emphasis of the current African-wide debate.

According to figures from Unesco, the enrolment of Africans in vocational and technical training at the secondary school level is under five per cent; this, in spite of the fact the African Union made vocational and technical training one of its priority education focus areas between 2006 and 2015.

Africa needs a three-pronged vocational technical education strategy: one focusing on youth still in high school, the second on adults out of work, with very little technical education, and the third lifelong vocational technical education, to allow Africans throughout their lives to acquire new or upgrade their technical education. African countries will have to come up with long-term industrialisation plans and then link vocational training to these, to provide the skills for industrialisation.

Most countries since independence from colonialism have never, and have still not, come up with co-integrated, coherent and practical long-term industrial policies. Most African economies consist of a large informal sector, which is often mostly agriculture, a large public sector and often a very small private sector. The challenge is to upgrade Africa's dominant informal sector to create businesses that can make their own and diverse products, rather than reselling cheap foreign imports. African countries are unlikely to successfully diversify from raw materials to value-added manufacturing without expanding vocational and technical education.

African countries will also be unable to use technology to leapfrog industrialisation, development and growth, unless they boost their vocational and technical training. Most of Africa has neglected vocational and technical education. Astonishingly, some countries, like South Africa, closed down en masse technical colleges which provided vocational and technical education.

Germany has a dual vocational education and training system which provides artisan training and apprenticeships, or on the job training at the same time. The system combines classroom education with workplace apprenticeships.

The vocational training includes soft skills. Germany's low youth unemployment has been attributed to the soaking up of youth through vocational training. Business contributes to the cost of the training.

In the German system, the vocational curricula are developed between business, government and trade unions, based on the skill demands of the market. The curricula are regularly updated as the demands of the labour market and economy changes.

South Korea pushed vocational Training in line with their five-year industrial plans. Crucially, if education policy had not been "in harmony", consistent and co-ordinated with policies such as agricultural, finance, urban and labour, Korea's "industrialisation would not have been accomplished". A research report on South Korea's development trajectory by Unesco concluded: "Education was also a tool for economic growth, and an education policy focused on the national development strategy was effectively implemented."

South Korea established vocational training centres, practical training initiatives, vocational high schools, industrial high schools and science technology education.
The skills of teachers were also continuously upgraded, and the standards of testing for the quality of skills learned by students were not only high, but uniformly applied. Education, training and skills transfer was carried out in close partnership with private and state-owned companies, with a strong "industry-training co-operation system". In-house company skills transfer played a large role.

Singapore has been one of the most successful developing countries that have successfully introduced life-long, future-oriented and new technology-focused continuous vocational technical education, linked to the changing demands of the country's industrialisation plans. Unlike African countries, Singapore specifically based its industrialisation on human capital, rather than natural resources.

Rwanda in 2011 introduced a technical and vocational strategy modelled on Singapore's as part of upgrading its labour skills, and improving productivity, linked to its national industrialisation strategy. There has to be a cultural change about vocational and technical training in Africa. Since independence from colonialism, governments, academics, civil society and ordinary people have viewed vocational and technical training as lower than university-based education. African countries must link their vocational and technical training to their industrialisation plans.

Importantly, the success of vocational and technical training depends on whether the content is relevant. This means that vocational and technical training has to be done in partnership between the state, industry and civil society, otherwise the training content is likely to be irrelevant. Vocational and technical training must focus on skills needs, which could create employment as well as serving as catalysts for wider development, from nurses to kindergarden teachers, to plumbers, electricians and mechanics. But vocational and technical training should also focus on future skills, technology and innovation, as African economies focus on technology-led industrialisation.

Finally, vocational and technical training in Africa should include soft skills, such as leadership, negotiation and communication skills.

Africa's agricultural sector urgently needs to diversify with new farming techniques and building a local farm machine industry. It desperately needs vocational and technical training as a catalyst to do so. African countries could do well to learn from Brazil's More Food Programme strategy, which increased the productivity of smallholder farms, while at the same time building a local farming machinery industry, and keeping youth in rural areas in employment.

In the More Food Programme, the country established vocational and technical training agricultural centres in rural areas, where people learnt new farming techniques, technical skills such as fixing farm machinery and setting up factories to make new farm machinery.

African state-owned entities must introduce a dual vocational and technical training system, which should provide to industry relevant vocational and technical training and apprenticeships, or on the job training at the same time. The intake of students must be based on merit - not ethnicity, links to the governing party or leader, or the local traditional leader.

African countries could get foreign investors, whether from industrial countries, or new emerging powers, such as China and Saudi Arabia, to provide vocational and technical training to employees and surrounding communities, in return for investment or mining rights.

African countries must make vocational and technical training capacity building part of trade deals with industrial and emerging powers.

• The author William Gumede is chairperson of the Democracy Works Foundation.