South Africa’s plan to attract new skills

The government has sought the private sector’s help to ensure South Africa attracts the skilled professionals it needs to address its skills crisis.

For years, South Africa has faced a major problem – highly skilled professionals leave the country for better opportunities elsewhere while the local economy faces a skills shortage.

Recent data from The Outlier revealed that just over 900,000 South Africans were living abroad in 2020.

According to Stats SA’s Migration Profile Report for South Africa 2023, this number has increased steadily over the past twenty years, from 500,000 in 2000.

Of these 900,000 people, 7 out of 10 are living in either Europe or Oceania. In particular, Australia and New Zealand have seen a large growth in South African residents. 

In 2020, around 273,000 South Africans lived in those two countries, more than double the 106,000 who lived there in 2000.

The Outlier revealed that, in March 2021, 205,000 South Africans were living in England and Wales alone, according to the Office for National Statistics. 

Many are highly qualified, with 54% of those aged 16 years and older holding higher education qualifications such as a degree.

A similar trend can be seen in Australia, where 43% of South Africans who have moved there have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

However, the government is now working to address this skills shortage by drawing on the private sector’s expertise.

Marisa Jacobs, MD of Xpatweb, said the government departments responsible for updating the national Critical Skills List to attract highly skilled foreign professionals to South Africa are working closely with businesses and the private sector to ensure an even further refined list that adequately reflects the country’s employment needs.

The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), which assists the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) in compiling the list, is currently working on the full reiteration of the Critical Skills List for publishing in 2025. 

The DHA defines critical skills as those crucial for economic growth and without which certain projects and work could not be undertaken.

To this end, the DHET recently held the second in a series of engagements for stakeholder input specifically on the methodology and possible improvements in putting the list together.

The list was updated in 2022, with two adjustments since, the latest being in October 2023.

Jacobs explained that the Critical Skills List informs which occupations the DHA approves for Critical Skills Visas for skilled professionals from abroad who are in high demand by South African corporates. 

Once an occupation is on the list, it is meant to ensure a smoother and expedited visa application.

Currently, the DHET mainly uses the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), the Labour Market Dynamics Survey (LMDS) and job vacancies advertised on the job-hunting sites PNET and Career Junction to compile the list on Occupations in High Demand (OIHD) to compile the list.

Jacobs said that, during the workshop, stakeholders recommended that the DHET use more data, more sources of data, and current data on labour market trends and the skills South African businesses struggle to fill from the local labour pool when updating the list.

Xpatweb conducts an annual Critical Skills Survey with more than 500 respondents from verified employers who take part, indicating which skills they struggle most to fill and must recruit from outside of South Africa.

Jacobs explained that the survey aims to determine the extent of critical skills shortages in the country and the role of foreign nationals in addressing these shortages.

The DHET said in its Technical Report for the 2020 Critical Skills List that the Xpatweb Survey provided a high-level look at occupation clusters that are extremely difficult to recruit in South Africa. 

It also mentioned the top-down approach where businesses indicate which skills are critical and how the Department used Xpatweb’s information to determine what should be on the final Critical Skills List.

Jacobs said in the 2023/24 Survey, respondents indicated that engineers and ICT professionals are among the top 10 skills in high demand.

Respondents also had an uphill battle to find skilled artisans, foreign language speakers and C-Suite executives.

In total, 79% of organisations indicated they find it difficult to recruit critically skilled individuals. More than 80% of participants perceive the visa application process as a prohibitor when recruiting internationally.

Jacobs said some of the most onerous factors in obtaining work visas for critically skilled individuals are:

• No provision is made for the occupations on the Critical Skills List.
• The professional body registration process for the said individual.
• The SAQA evaluation process.

Therefore, she said it is a welcome development that the Minister of Home Affairs partially waived a SAQA evaluation certificate for the Critical Skills Visa application as long as proof of the application to SAQA is presented. 

This waiver is part of the newly gazetted Points-Based System for Critical Skills and General Work Visas.

At the workshop, Operation Vulindlela quoted estimates by National Treasury that eliminating the shortage of critical skills can raise potential GDP by up to 1.3 percentage points above the baseline in a 12-year period. 

The demand for skilled workers is also believed to boost the demand for semi- and unskilled workers.

“A 1% increase in skilled immigration would lead to a 1.5% increase in employment in the domestic labour market, as skilled personnel create lower-skilled jobs,” they said.

The International Labour Organisation recommended that the government pilot a direct connection between the Critical Skills List and a potential number of visas for certain occupations and for certain durations.

This will provide input to the relevancy and usefulness of the list.

Another recommendation centred around regular updates to the list with some kind of predictability for stakeholders. This would improve overall transparency and signal the expected duration of the current list.

“Many countries use critical skills lists to inform immigration policies. Inaccurate lists may result in either a shortage of foreign workers where they are truly needed, or an oversupply in areas that are already saturated,” Jacobs said.

“Working with the best possible data to compile South Africa’s national Critical Skills List is therefore of the utmost importance.”