It is well known that South Africa has a serious skills shortage. The new skills development dispensation introduced by the government in 1998, underpinned by the Skills Development Act, appears to have made little inroad into the shortage. The latest macroeconomic growth strategy, the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (Asgisa), has focused attention on skills, making the elimination of the shortage a priority in order to achieve the 6 per cent economic growth rate that it has set as a target for the country in order to halve unemployment and poverty by 2014
