SARChI’s resident post-doctoral fellow, Dr Celestin Mayombe, presents his PhD research at the African Academic Research Forum (AARF) 28-29 April 2016 in Pretoria, South Africa. Under the theme, “Transforming adult and continuing education practices”, his topic title is “Adult non-formal education and training for employment: what can be learnt from practice in South Africa”?
ABSTRACT
Adult Non-formal Education and Training (NFET) in South Africa was adopted in 1990 to address the problem of unemployment of non-educated and unskilled adults. The concern that informed this paper is that adults who face long-term unemployment due to a lack of marketable skills, remain unemployed after completing NFET programmes. The paper reports on a study conducted to investigate what constitutes NFET enabling environments for employment. The paper focuses on assessing the effectiveness of the internal delivery environments of NFET centres fostering skills utilisation in the wage- or self-employment of the graduates. The findings show that there is a relationship between the types of the centre (whether public or private), trainees’ courses and employability. Based on the effectiveness on overall employment which is 52.37% of the graduates after graduation, the author concludes that if the NFET aims at self-employment by linking the training programme to income-generating activities in micro-enterprises or co-operatives, NFET presents as a relevant tool to foster employment, and hence reduce poverty in south Africa.
