In a powerful address at the Strategic Plan Stakeholder Consultative Workshop for the Ministry of Skills Audit and Development’s 2026–2030 Strategic Plan, Permanent Secretary Ambassador Rudo Chitiga reframed the nation’s understanding of wealth, declaring that “the global currency today are skills.”
The workshop, a critical step in shaping the nation’s future human capital development agenda, served as a platform for Ambassador Chitiga to outline the Ministry’s transformative, demand-driven approach over the past two years and its vision for a specialized, industry-led skills ecosystem.
“When we measure the wealth of Zimbabwe, it should be measured in skills,” Ambassador Chitiga asserted. “Do we have the skills to exploit the resources we have, to enter different markets, to attract investment, and to deliver the services required in an upper-middle-income society?”
Moving beyond generic training, the Ministry is pioneering a model of specialized “Vocational Schools of Excellence.” In a key revelation, Ambassador Chitiga announced advanced discussions with the Council of Engineers to establish a technical and vocational school specializing exclusively in iron and steel.
“Our current training colleges have like 10 courses. It’s sometimes not enough teachers,” she explained. “But if we specialize in one area… that is critical to the economy, we can in fact, create and develop the right skills that are required to enable the evolution of skills as technology evolves.”
This shift is a direct response to emerging economic needs. Using the example of Electric Vehicles (EVs), Ambassador Chitiga highlighted the urgent need to modernize training infrastructure. “We need computerized diagnosis and treatment and that means we need to re-tool our training centres,” she stated, emphasizing that “each and every sector needs to lead in defining the training that is now required.”
A cornerstone of this new strategy is fostering deep collaboration between industry and academia. The Ministry recently organized a groundbreaking industry-academia engagement, which concluded with a consensus on the need for a permanent structure for continuous consultation.
“Our youth and vocational training institutions should be part of this discussion,” Ambassador Chitiga urged, “not just the government training institutions, but also the private sector and the church-related organizations’ training institutions.”
The Permanent Secretary also reflected on the Ministry’s initial challenge: convincing the nation of the critical distinction between a qualification and a skill.
“People thought, ‘if I have a qualification, why are you talking to me about skills?’” she recalled. The Ministry’s work has been to demonstrate that dynamic, market-relevant skills are the true drivers of individual and national competitiveness in the global arena.
Delegates, who came from across government, state-owned enterprises, national employment councils, local authorities, industry, faith-based organizations, development partners, and civil society, highlighted critical areas that the ministry must include in its strategic plan for the next 5 years, including devolving operations to provinces, collaborations in skills development, tracer systems, skills audits and sharing of audit data, among others.
A key issue was the need to make vocational education attractive to Zimbabweans so that learners make informed choices about whether to pursue an academic degree or a vocational skill.
The consultative workshop marks the beginning of a concerted effort to embed these principles into the Ministry’s 2026–2030 Strategic Plan, positioning skills development as the non-negotiable foundation for achieving Zimbabwe’s Vision 2030.