National Foundation for Community Skills Development Centres (COSDEC)

National Foundation for Community Skills Development Centres (COSDEC) - Republic of Namibia

Namibia is a south-western African country. Its population is les than two million. Its economy is mainly extractive and subsistence. The majority of the population is locked into subsistence informal sector. The social problems facing the country are therefore:

Ten percent of the population own seventy percent of national assets and income. Sixty percent live below the poverty level. Unemployment among the girls of 25-29 years old is twenty percent. Unemployment amount the boys of the same age group is nineteen percent. Unemployment in the rural areas was 40 percent as compared to 30 percent in urban areas.

Namibia is a country endowed with natural resources: mining, agriculture, fisheries, tourism and others. These resources create a great potential for growth. What appears to be missing is the human capital.

Technical competence, knowledge, innovativeness and human ingenuity are the ingredients for wealth creation and economic growth. These competencies are particularly important for the upliftment of the communal subsistence economy and its integration into mainstream cash economy.

Skills Development at the community level is there fore critical. It was against this background that a National Foundation for Community Skills Development was created in Namibia to address the challenge of community empowerment through skills development and the promotion of enterprise.

The National Foundation for Community Skills Development was established with the goal of enabling communities to source resources both financial, material and technical, from government, donor community and national sources. The Foundation enabled communities to establish National Foundation for Community Skills Development Centres (COSDECs) as community trusts.

The COSDECSs are tasked to identify the community training needs according to the economic potential of a particular community. In this was the community will be able to source resources through the Foundation.

The Foundation sources funds and other resources from the government, non-governmental organisations and the donor community in order to address the needs of such a community.

Skills development in the COSDECs are hands-on and competence based. Learning is by doing. Quality control is provided by the guilds or industry. Certification is, therefore, a joint responsibility of the Foundation and the industry.

The COSDECs have provided out-of-school and unemployed youth with choices and opportunities to learn skills, however basic, and the possibility for employment and self-employment. The Foundation is now devising additional programmes for the COSDECs aimed at adding entrepreneurship and product incubation to the training for skills development. The goal is to equip trainees with skills, entrepreneurial acumen and productive competencies before they are weaned off to stand by themselves. The Foundation has been helping the COSDECs to assess the communities economic and development potential.

The Foundation for Community Skills Development has been co-ordination the resource mobilisation.

The Foundation which is made up of members of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and governmental officials, serving in their individual capacity, has been able to identify potential resources for the support to the COSDECs because of its knowledge and networks nationally and internationally.

The Foundation established a Support Unit which supervised the identification and the establishment of COSDECs in seven different localities throughout the country. The Support Unit helped to organise the communities to create the COSDECs Trusts, election of the boards and appointment of executive officers.

The Government of the Republic of Namibia provided seed funds to kick start the creation of COSDECs. The European Union provided training and institutional development of the COSDECs. COV of the Netherlands provided technical support to the Support Unit of the Foundation. CISP of Italy has been training trainees in entrepreneurship. Hope'87 of Austria and NAMAS of Norway linked up with the Tsumeb and Opuwo and Orumana COSDECs. Due to the co-ordination provided by the Foundation input from various donors proved to be mutually reinforcing.

However, donor support should be viewed as temporary. The challenge is to address the sustainability issue.

The Community Skills Development Centres (COSDECs) are envisaged as community owned and community managed organisations. In this regard, the COSDECs are expected to attain a certain measure of sustainability. This means that the COSDECs should generate income to support its activities. It is against this background that efforts are being made to establish incubation units at each COSDEC. Skills development should lead to self-employment, community development and income generation. This is the challenge of community skills development.

EMP/SKILLS - Skills and Employability Department