Bame Boitshoko
Academic Development Economist
Here is a very interesting conversation: Botswana has a skills mismatch! No, let me rephrase this: Botswana has a significant mismatch! For some “Apparent Reason”, I choose not to believe this. Why? Because this statement alone disqualifies an entire ecosystem that is continuously invested in. Let me give you an example: a statement was made last week that Botswana’s economy is currently facing a 75 percent skills mismatch. If I were to assess this from a layman perspective, what this statement could mean is that there has been a 75 percent rapid changes in technology that means 75 percent of the existing workforce is redunt, 75 percent of Higher education curriculum do not teach what the current market wants, meaning 75 percent of HRDC and BQA’s role and responsibilities have been, well in simple terms, a waste of government resources. And to boomerang this back to industry, maybe 75 percent of the job descriptions have been poorly written, thus attracting the wrong applicants. As unimaginably as it may be, it is still a possibility.
Now, here is my argument: I believe that skill is abundant in this economy. I believe that the economy’s growth velocity was slower than the growth in skilled labour in the country over the years. Rustically speaking, when see it from a fixed asset base and investment, Botswana may not simply have a “skills mismatch.” It may have a capital-composition and skills-absorption problem. Meaning, the country has an accumulated infrastructure base without expanding either machinery, equipment, industries, or operating capacity at the rate required to productively absorb its growing skilled labour force. Looking at the numbers published by Statistics Botswana, the real stock of machinery and transport equipment over a period of 10 years has reduced, whereas the skilled labour force output has increased. Mathematically, the equipment-based productive capital available per skilled person declined by approximately 37 percent between 2015 and 2024. Look, I’m also not saying that there has been insufficient capital accumulation in aggregate because the numbers simply show that Botswana has accumulated more productive assets, but mostly in buildings and infrastructure; I am simply saying that maybe the problem is that too much is invested in structures that create few or delayed jobs. Let’s look at the math.
When you further evaluate this accumulated “productive asset” base, the conversation becomes even more interesting. You see, in 2024, the real value of buildings and structures was about P317.5 billion. Our estimates suggest that only P8 billion to P12 billion was linked to factories, mines and other industrial facilities. Public infrastructure accounted for roughly P43 billion to P54 billion, while the largest share, which was between P226 billion and P249 billion, was valued as commercial buildings and other private structures. Now, please note that these are estimates because Statistics Botswana no longer provides a full breakdown. However, the pattern still matters. Why? Think about this: a shopping mall or an office complex or even a government building is an asset; however, it does not create the same productive capacity as a factory, processing plant, logistics network or industrial machinery, would you agree?
This makes the skills-mismatch argument incomplete because between 2015 and 2024, Botswana’s productive assets declined from about P58.7 billion to P55.4 billion, while the skilled workforce grew by more than 50 percent. As a result, productive capital available per skilled person fell from about P262,000 to P164,000, forcing a decline of 37 percent. Even if we count most commercial property as productive, capital per skilled person increased by only 5 percent over the entire period. Rustically speaking, Botswana continued producing skilled people without expanding the factories, machinery and businesses needed to employ them at the same pace. And because of this, I still stand by my argument that I believe that skill is abundant in this economy. I believe that the economy’s growth velocity was slower than the growth in skilled labour in the country over the years. Botswana has the right skills, but whether the economy has created enough productive places for those skills to go.
So, let’s imagine that Botswana does indeed have a 75 percent mismatch. Maybe we have placed this figure on the wrong side of the labour market. The mismatch may not be between the skills people possess and the skills employers require. It may be between the skilled workforce Botswana continues to produce and the type of economy our investment decisions continue to build. You see, this distinction is important. Rustically, if the problem is a skills mismatch, the solution is simply to retrain graduates, right? However, if the real problem is weak skills absorption, continuing to retrain may simply produce more qualified people competing for the same limited number of productive jobs. Look, we cannot train our way out of a shortage of factories, processing plants, export businesses, productive SMEs, machinery and expanding industries. An economy does not employ qualifications simply because they exist; businesses actually employ people when productive capital, market demand and growth opportunities exist alongside those qualifications.
Therefore, before accepting the claim that 75 percent of Botswana’s skills are mismatched, let’s think about this: this mismatch is against which jobs, in which industries and based on which vacancies? If such a large mismatch exists, where are the thousands of jobs that employers cannot fill? High graduate unemployment does not automatically prove that graduates have the wrong skills; it may also prove that the economy is not creating enough skilled work. And that’s a simple fact.
Perhaps Botswana’s deeper mismatch is between its human-capital strategy and its capital-allocation strategy. We are educating people for a diversified and productive economy, but we are not building that economy at the same pace. Botswana may not be producing the wrong people. It may simply be failing to create the economy those people were trained to serve.
