With less than 14 years to go before the industrialization deadline, Namibia has started seeking ways to tweak its tertiary education system into an effective tool for skills and knowledge creation.

The country whose population is just above 2.2 million still has a vast shortage of skills needed to deal with poverty and inequalities largely because the education being offered does not prepare the graduates for real life situations.

To address the situation, a two-day workshop is underway in Windhoek to review the recommendations made by UNESCO in April 2016.

The scoping mission was carried out to help Namibia identify strategic priorities as well as propose ways of arresting the skills shortages.

Although Namibia has two major universities, the higher education minister Itah Kandjii-Murangi told the workshop Monday that opened in Windhoek that the country still suffers a skills shortage and needs to rethink its strategy.

According to Kandjii-Murangi, the current system has revealed severe disparities in employability skills of graduates, their self-sustenance and participation in the country's economic growth.

The clarion call, she said, is to review, transform and align programs of study and properly articulate levels of education and training; to do away with dead ends in the system and to expand access in the technical and vocational education sub-sector.

"We all owe it to the masses to deliver on the promises and set targets and goals of the education sector," she said.  

(Xinhua News Agency June 21, 2016)