A chat with Vera Ng’oma, Country Director, British Council, Malawi about employability in Africa

With extensive experience, Vera Ng’oma is a leadership, personal and career development enabler and a passionate advocate for tangible excellence. For over 15 years, she has worked in pivotal roles in communications, news media, education training, international development and the NGO sector. 

Vera is the founder of Excellica, an institute that helps build stronger workplaces. She was appointed as the Country Director of the British Council, Malawi in February 2020. 

I had a chat with Vera about the quality of entrepreneurial education in Africa, the employment landscape, the visible shortage of relevant skills and what stakeholders can do to remedy the situation.

According to her, skills and jobs are crucial for Africa’s economies, especially as its youth population is projected to be the world’s largest by 2050. She also disclosed that at least 10 million youths enter Africa’s labour market, but only 3.1 million new formal wage jobs are created.

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Vera Ng’oma

Read the excerpts from the full interview below:

Q: From your position in an organisation that is at the forefront of driving empowerment across Africa, how would you describe the African employment landscape in 2024?

I would describe it as quite challenging. Challenging as in, you’ve got demand outweighing supply.

A lot of young people finishing school and getting into the world of work without getting jobs. Statistics show that between 8 and 10 million young people come to the job market every year, but only 3 million jobs are available. That is a job for one in three.

That is not an encouraging statistic. But, there are reasons why that is the case. There are not enough jobs being created. Also, the education sector is underperforming. What is good, though, is that the education sector has started to realise that education is more than the purpose of literacy. Education should equip people for a higher quality of life. Now, attention is being paid to employability in many African countries,

Africa has a large population of young people. It is a problem that is not going to go away soon. It is a problem that requires everybody’s attention. The fact that efforts are being made to have the right investment and the right conversations to plough through is a good way forward.

But there is a long way to go.

Q: A recently debated concept is “employability”. How much of an issue is employability in countries across the continent and what can leaders do to equip citizens with industry-specific skills?

So, it is a big challenge. I don’t know what number unemployment is on the list of challenges Africa is dealing with. But youth employment is big because you’re talking about livelihoods, about the next generation and the economy.

So, from that perspective, we must look at that critically. I wouldn’t call the situation a crisis yet. But, I think that it is an issue that should be addressed.

Interestingly, you mentioned founders. Entrepreneurship is one of the areas that is increasingly being seen as one of the pathways in terms of solutions to the unemployment problem. We know that people have gone into entrepreneurship because it is the only choice that they’ve got. With a smartphone, many have created opportunities.

But, I think that entrepreneurship will be more productive if we have a more structured entrepreneurship ecosystem. Getting the right skills is very important.

We have seen that even when employers train people for specific roles, they sometimes get the skills right but not the attitude. That is because people don’t mostly come with the right mindset.

However, founders must have a partnership with education providers to prepare people who are marketable in the labour market. This way educators can provide the kind of education that is fit for purpose. One that looks at the end user, which is the founders and employers to understand what kind of skills they are looking for so that they can people with those skills, rather than just continuing to do more of the same.

So, the employment problem is on one level about not having enough jobs. The other angle is that there isn’t enough focus on the critical skills required to make the economy grow.

Q: From your privileged position, what would you say are the major challenges derailing the quest to achieve a passable youth employability index on the continent as we speak?

The partnership that is required to fix the problem isn’t quite in place. It is a big problem. It cannot be solved by any one person. It cannot be solved by just the government, employers or educational institutions. It takes a shared vision across those key institutions. There is also the problem of getting the right people around the table.

Once you are clear about those, I feel like there are lots of solution-finding endeavours that leave young people out. So, if you’re an entrepreneur, you know that you’re not going to build a product without knowing there is a market out there. And once you have built it, your focus shifts to customer service, because you want to make sure you keep the customers, which is always easier than getting new customers.

We need to apply some of that entrepreneurial mindset to this social problem. Are we trying to create opportunities and jobs for young people? So why don’t we get young people involved? So, I think partnership is important.

I don’t think we can run away from the importance of investment. Some solutions can only happen through investments. And, those investments can be in the form of money. It can be in the form of training.

I will also stress intangible investments, like leadership, accountability, and efficiency because we know that money is always hard to come by.

There’s so much to be gained from partnership that I talked about and I think that we don’t always spend enough time to figure out why partnership is necessary.

We need a process that allows everybody to figure out what part they can play. Then, put together a comprehensive process to drive things forward.

Q: What quick fixes can stakeholders explore while we wait for this round table conversation?

I appreciate why some quick fixes might be helpful. We have a problem of a magnitude and every little effort counts. But, because this problem has been there for too long, we need to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to solve it soon.

We need to slice it up into different phases. We can start with getting clarity and deciding which bits to start with. These have to be things that will likely provide the most impact going forward. But, while it is important to do some quick fixes now, that doesn’t take away the need to look for long-lasting solutions.

As you know, sometimes it is difficult to bring people to the table to discuss. But, having a varied approach means that at some point you will come to something in your hierarchy of potential solutions that you can implement. Sometimes, the challenge is we stand still, and sometimes making some kind of movement, even if it is a tiny one, gets you in motion.

Q: Please share with me some of the efforts of the British Council in bridging the employability gap across the continent. And, how extensive is your reach?

British Council works in about 100 countries. But, we have got work to do in about 200 countries. This means that we are present in at least 100 countries but our work touches about 200.

Now, in Africa, we are in about 16 countries. As I said, those are countries where we have a presence and office. We are in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Ethiopia, Ghana and some other medium-sized countries.

Our work in terms of employability is very much about young people and supporting their aspirations, helping them to unleash their potential and to fulfil their aspirations. So what we do is equip them to create opportunities.

The key bits are education and enterprise. Those are the two areas in which we support the young people. The British Council’s approach encompasses basic, secondary, and tertiary education, aiming to build robust, inclusive education systems through partnerships. These systems enable youth to develop cognitive and life skills as they progress through the educational journey and enter the workforce. Our non-formal education interventions, such as Youth Connect, facilitate agency, leadership, and peer learning.

In terms of education, we work in every part of the education system. This includes foundational learning which is primary. Everything we do in terms of education work is really about education for a better quality of life.

One of the criticisms against higher education in Africa is the fact that it’s too academic whilst there are areas of growing new knowledge through research. Sometimes, the research is not usable or has any real benefits to society.

So we know that literacy is important. We know qualifications are important, but the ultimate vision around what we do is quality of life. This allows us to support education systems and institutions, but it also allows us to look at some of the wrap-around activities that foster the achievement of this goal.

We support the creation of networks. We connect people. All these are things that we do to make sure that young people aren’t just getting the education, but they’re also getting the support, whether that is in terms of systems, peers or mentorship.

Let me focus on higher education because that is closest to employability. Now, the reason I stress foundational learning is because that’s where it all starts. We also know there are a lot of dropouts, especially girls because the system has been overburdened. So,  if you have 6 million kids coming into primary, about 30% of those getting into secondary and much smaller, getting into higher education.

Ultimately, our focus is looking at something sustainable. Our approach is to support system strengthening. We look at how we can support systems that serve young people.

We are working to support educational institutions to make them stronger. So, when young people are getting out of those institutions, they are also marketable to the workplace.

And, we do that in many ways. We do it through work-based learning. We have a partnership that brings in international best practices. And we also do it through partnerships. Recently, we had a partnership between Botswana and Malawi looking at how they could learn from each other. Botswana has a stronger private sector. So, it is a good collaboration for Malawi.

We also have programmes that ensure that girls you know have equal opportunities. If you take fields like traditional trades, construction and the like, you are unlikely to find a lot of girls in them. So, we put special conditions in place so that women and girls feel that this is a space that they want to go into.

Institutional leadership is crucial. The British Council’s Innovation for African Universities (IAU) programme demonstrates how academia can enhance youth employability through Africa-UK partnerships that support innovation and commercialisation. This initiative helps students build job skills and entrepreneurial capabilities tied to real market opportunities.

In technical and vocational education and training (TVET), apprenticeships and work-integrated learning initiatives that combine real work with training could become a reliable model for developing industry-specific skills and providing valuable exposure for learners. If successful examples can be scaled up, both businesses and society will benefit.

SoCreative, the British Council’s free, self-paced online learning platform is equipping thousands of creative entrepreneurs and leaders with business skills, knowledge and understanding.  

In Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, our Skills for Inclusive Digital Participation (SIDP) programme is helping bridge the digital divide. About 18,000 people with disabilities, disadvantaged youth and women have improved their digital skills, started businesses and are accessing new markets.

By addressing the entire education lifecycle, our work leverages policy, practice, and partnerships that are locally led and informed by global best practices. We connect students, educators, policymakers, academics, creatives, and entrepreneurs, all focused on increasing opportunities for youth. This approach strengthens systems and identifies and tests incentives to develop effective solutions.

This impact story shows how an inclusive approach is making a difference. 

Q: What are some of the challenges that your organisation has faced in driving these initiatives? And how are you navigating these?

One of the gaps that we generally have is data, as in statistics. When you don’t have that, it can be quite challenging to be able to tell with some accuracy, the progress that you are making.

It would be helpful if we could count on the quality of data that helps us to be a bit more granular about what it is that we’re seeing from the work that we’re doing. So, we’ve been thinking about the best way to invest in that.

The other is bringing people around the table. One of the things that we do well, as a cultural relations organization that focuses on young people, is the role of a convener. But, once you get people on the table, how do you get them to arrive at a common purpose?

As I have seen in my area of work and across the region, getting the partnership right is so critical and articulating the vision is most important. But, getting some to drive it is what sustains things.

In all, I think the wider society would benefit more if we bring a diversity of players around the table. It all comes out of commitment and collaboration.

Q: What is going to be the landscape five years from now, going by where we are now?

I will go back to where we started. It is quite clear that there is a problem of creating enough jobs for young people.

We need to look at how we tackle this problem from all angles. On our part at the British Council, we are party to the whole network that is looking to bring some solutions as long as we keep searching. Because, when we get that, our economies will also go in the right direction.

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