Implications of globalization and economic restructuring for skills development in sub-Saharan Africa

This paper discusses the role skills development can play in avoiding the problems of globalization and structural adjustment and realizing their benefits and what can be done to position countries to capture the employment and wage benefits of globalization. The author argues that higher and more evenly distributed levels of education will help mitigate wage inequities that have been widened by globalization. However, until new cohorts of educated workers enter the workforce, investment in additional training for the current workforce may provide a substitute, although the lower the average education attainment, the less perfect the substitute. Investments have to be sustained for new labour force entrants. The important points are that, first, the training must be recurrent or continual to update the skills of workers os as to enable them to stay abreast of new technologies. Secodn, the training must not be too narrow, because adaptability is another key to success in the modern world. Building capacity for lifelong recurrent training and for training for displaced workers is also an important institutional measure.