Our research strategy

Our research has made critical gains in understanding skill formation systems and the complex relationships in the ecosystem. There is, however, still important work to expand our research and thus the evidence base that policymakers in the developing world so urgently need. Our focus areas for expansion include:

Skill formation systems for social and economic development and ecological wellbeing

It is well known that no country has successfully developed without industrialisation. However, industrialisation is a contested and uneven process, particularly in the developed world. A further challenge is that developing countries now need to industrialise in the face of the climate crisis, and green industrialisation adds complexity. The nature of industrialisation shapes the way skills are produced, but there is not enough literature on Africa’s industrialisation trajectory from a skills perspective.

We thus seek to understand the following:

• What is taking place in Africa regarding industrialisation, the ways in which industrialization trajectories can create a sustainable and just future, and how skills formation interacts with these trajectories. This includes an analysis of whether or not the education system is changing and meeting the challenges of the urgently required changes in various aspects of society.

• How technology and the environmental crisis are and could be changing work and how can Africa and the developing world can ensure a just transition in the face of these changes.

• How skills planning and education players are embedded into economic planning and development processes.

Learning and work transitioning in difficult times and complex contexts

The knowledge and skills required to access labour markets are developed through a complex mix of formal education, on-the-job training, and simply learning through experience. In the developing world, there is an extreme lack of data on the relationships between education and work.

We seek to build on our work which aims to understand the following:

• How education is affected by labour market inequalities, in particular how educational achievement levels are affected by poverty levels.

• The relationships between disciplinary knowledge, expertise, and on-the-job learning.

• How knowledge develops through work and how ways of knowing can be transferred from one workplace to another.

• What does it mean for formal education systems to prepare people for work in the informal sector?