THIS WEEK

Beyond skills: Is Africa creating places for talent to matter?

Last week, policymakers, educators, employers and development partners gathered in Harare for Africa Skills Week 2026. The theme was telling: “Skills for Resilient and Competitive African Industries: From Training to Value Creation.”

We often respond to Africa’s employment challenge with a familiar prescription – equip young Africans with skills.

And rightly so.

We need digital skills, technical skills, entrepreneurial skills, leadership skills and, increasingly, artificial intelligence capabilities. But I find myself wondering whether we are asking enough about what happens after those skills have been acquired.

Where will those skills matter?

A young African can learn to code, operate sophisticated machinery, manage a business or master a technical trade. But capability needs somewhere to land. It needs industries, enterprises and institutions where knowledge can be applied, problems can be solved and value can be created.

This is why Africa’s skills conversation must also become a conversation about the enabling environment for contribution.

Consider Burkina Faso. This month, the country opened its first gold refinery, part of an effort to process and add value to more of its natural resources domestically rather than simply export them in raw form. Whatever one’s assessment of the wider political context, the economic principle is worth examining. Local value addition can create more places for skills to become productive.

Nigeria is approaching the challenge from another direction. Its Digital Free Zones initiative aims to make it easier for technology and service companies to raise global capital, employ Nigerians and serve international markets while remaining in Nigeria. The stated ambition is to retain more jobs, intellectual property and economic value within the country.

These initiatives are not evidence that the problem has been solved. Implementation and outcomes matter. They do, however, illustrate a larger point.

Africa cannot keep asking its people to become more employable without asking whether its economies are becoming more capable of employing their capabilities.

An enabling environment is more than a government policy or an industrial park. It includes reliable infrastructure, access to finance and markets, functioning institutions and conditions in which enterprises can start, grow and create productive work.

Interestingly, that thinking was reflected at the close of Africa Skills Week. The African Union Commission argued that the true measure of progress should extend beyond people trained and qualifications awarded to the enterprises enabled, industries strengthened and lives changed.

That distinction matters.

Through my Workforce Optimisation lens, developing capability is only part of the work. The real value emerges when people have the opportunity and environment to contribute. A certificate demonstrates learning; it does not guarantee that what was learned will ever find productive expression.

That should change how we think about Africa’s young people. We should certainly ask, “What skills will they need?” But we must simultaneously ask, What industries are we building? What enterprises are we enabling? What problems can their capabilities solve? What barriers are preventing talent from becoming productivity?

Perhaps Africa’s challenge is not merely preparing people for jobs. It is building economies capable of absorbing, enabling and multiplying what those people can do.

For millions of young Africans, the defining question may no longer be simply, “What should I learn?” It may increasingly be “Where will what I have learned be allowed to matter?”

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“Optimize! Africa” is a weekly leadership column focused on the issues that shape Africa’s future through the lens of people, purpose, and performance. It explores themes such as leadership, workforce optimization, education, employability, organizational culture, governance, productivity, institutional effectiveness, and human capital development across the continent. The column’s initiator/author is Amara C. Ezediniru, Ph.D., a Nigerian workforce optimization strategist.