I shall begin with by raising a few points in comparison with policy processes in South Africa that we are grappling and similar to that of Kerala.  After 1994 South Africa moved towards a democratic government. In 1996 we adopted a new STI policy that foregrounded the knowledge economy and the national system of innovation. In 2019, we designed a new white paper that sets out the framework within which we are working with policy instruments and mechanisms and so on. Our policy aims to promote innovation for inclusive and sustainable development that promotes transformation in the society and we also have foregrounded the fourth industrial revolution. Our presidential commission has submitted its completed report in December 2020.

There are a lot of parallels with the processes in Kerala. Our presidential commission has also foregrounded the investment in human capital and highlighted the need to design, streamline and align our education system through a coordinated multi stakeholder process. What's happening here today in Kerala is such a coordinated multi stakeholder process. Very differently to what you've said about Kerala, where you have a problem of unemployed graduates and skilled professionals, in South Africa, we have a large pool of unemployed that do not have the right kinds of skills for the new kinds of jobs. I'm making that point to compare some of the strategies we are adopting.

Over the past four or five months, I've been involved in a province to develop the economic and social development strategy and we are part of a panel that is developing our housing strategy and central to that is skills. I just wanted to share two points that came up in our strategy.  One is that we need to develop our paradigm and our framework for thinking about skills development. We have a framework for economic development and then we elaborate that into thinking about our skills development.

We have also identified high growth industry sectors like you have in Kerala, but slightly different. Apart from ICT and digital services, food, beverages Agro processing and Agro businesses, we have also highlighted sectors such as cultural and creative services and the cannabis industry.  But then what I thought could be quite useful to insert into the discussion here is what is the groupings of the types of skills that we need to grow.

There's a big list of the types of skills that need to be developed in Kerala. In our strategy, we have grouped these into four. One, the technology skills related to physical, digital and biological dimensions.  So we need to develop advanced digital skills to design, develop and support our technologies that are underpinning new ways of doing things.  But what is equally important is the society dimension and the digital society. In that regard, we need to  make sure that we are developing the right skills so that people can thrive in the workplace, of the future.  But equally in the business skills, the business dimension is critical. So, we see the omnipresence of digitalization the need for digital trust and the need for new models.

 So, we need to develop new skills to take advantage of new ways of managing and doing business, and that's equally important. And then finally, at the governance level, we need new kinds of policy, new regulation and we need to be ready to respond to the new opportunities and demands of globalization as being stressed here today.  Hence, we need to develop skill development programs. We have to include governance skills to can take into account rapidly changing technology in an increasingly global world. 

 The second point I wanted to make is about the nature of teaching and learning. The example that I wanted to quickly talk about is a proposal for our skills development that enabled apprenticeships in South Africa. I know that the Kerala strategy talks a lot about technical and vocational education and financial commitment to apprenticeships. In South Africa, we typically have our apprenticeships focusing on theoretical knowledge on practical skills and on workplace experience.  The way that we do is very different because of technology and innovation and because of the innovations that we need in business models and processes. So, for example, we have open courses that use blended learning accessed from Global universities.

We can use digital portfolios for data informed decision making. Blockchain gives us new tools for accreditation. We've got new tools for digital identification and authentication and so on. These technologies could support multiple learning and pathways. I just want to point that besides those three aspects traditionally of theoretical knowledge, practical skills and workplace experience, we actually need new kinds of skills to be developed. To enable apprenticeships life skills become much more important, and we need to extend that training to include critical life skills like financial literacy, psycho-social support, etc.  Particularly if you're going to be talking about work from home and work near home, we need to extend that training to include digital skills. So in a country like South Africa, perhaps less so in Kerala, we need to skill young people very much in the use of advanced technologies in the workplace digital safety cyber security, etc. 

There is the need to extend our training to include entrepreneurship skills. So, if we have high levels of self-employment, we young people coming up with skills in business management and financial management, etc.  I must say I was so impressed with the depth of the planning that you had which is evident from the excellent budget speech.  Very clear planning in terms of numbers and approaches and that's something we envy. We are trying to even build our capacity to use digital means for more effective skills planning.  I think that to deepen the process and going forward, it's very important to theorize and conceptualize a bit more tightly; how it's linked with the framework for the economics growth strategy and how our skills development itself can use digital means to deepen what is possible? Thank you colleagues and we look forward to engaging with you and if it would be valid, we would love to engage through this state level process, to compare how we are grappling with these very similar challenges, in significantly similar but different contexts. Thank you.