ABSTRACT
Leveraging human resources with high-end skills accelerates the process of innovation and socio-economic transformation for any nation. Accordingly, our focus in this chapter is to provide an analysis of the higher education sector's contribution to the development of knowledge and skills for the future and reducing unemployment and poverty. We premise this on the fact that higher education institutions (HEIs) are critical for skilling, de-skilling and re-skilling graduates with the requisite skills to participate in the knowledge economy. We use a decolonial lens to analyse the country's skills development trajectory – the policies, strategies, philosophies and national critical skills audits highlighting their successes and failures. We argue that the consistent failures were of colonial origin and that the current Education 5.0 doctrine underpinned by the heritage-based philosophy has the potential to decolonise the country's skills development curriculum and meet the human capital needs the country requires for achieving Vision 2030 of an upper middle-income economy.
