The African Renaissance, NEPAD and skills formation: An identification of key policy tensions

The aim of the article is to critically consider the implications of the African Renaissance project for skills formation policies and priorities with a focus on the education and training systems of sub-Saharan Africa. The article commences with an account of the origins of the African Renaissance idea and its latest incarnation in the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). It is argued that the significance of the idea lies in the attempt to formulate an indigenous, African response to globalisation, but that it needs to be linked to a clear agenda of democratisation, poverty eradication and social justice and that its implications for all areas of policy must be spelled out. The second part of the article provides a broad framework for understanding the major implications of the African Renaissance for education and training policy. Here it is suggested that existing dominant approaches towards understanding skills for development based on human capital theory are insufficient for realising the African Renaissance project. Rather, the skills formation approach will be outlined as an alternative. The basis of such an approach is to view skills formation as an aspect of wider social relations and inequalities and to link skills formation strategies to the objective of ending Africa's economic and political marginalisation. Rather than imply a universal set of policy priorities, however, it is argued that the African Renaissance project instead represents a series of policy tensions and that resolving these tensions requires strategies specific to individual countries and regions.