Skilled workforce key to lure investors—Mutharika
President Peter Mutharika says it has been proven globally that a skilled workforce is key to attracting investors who in turn drive national economic growth.
The President said this at Mponela in Dowa District on Friday where he presided over the regional launch of community colleges in the Central Region.
He said: “We all agree [that] a skilled workforce is an investment in its own right. It is national capital.”
Mutharika, who touted the community colleges programme his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration is rolling out nationwide, said developing skills lays foundations for industrialisation.
Without skills development, the President said, Malawi cannot become a producing and exporting economy.
He said: “Countries such as Germany, China, India, Japan, Brazil and the like have become producing and export-led economies because they saw the need for technical, entrepreneurial and vocational education.”
The President thanked the World Bank, the European Union (EU), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) for their financial support towards the programme.
Earlier, Minister of Labour, Youth and Manpower Development Henry Mussa said the whole idea of community technical colleges was hatched in the spirit of waging war against poverty by raising living standards of communities.
The G20 Development Working Group on Human Resource Development nominated Malawi alongside three other countries worldwide to champion skills development on a pilot basis.
