Skilled Labor Shortage: What the Oil Industry in East Africa Need to Do

What do you think the oil and gas industry in Tanzania and East Africa at large need?

The industry needs many skilled and competent people at every level to work in the industry. It is obvious that there is shortage in the current local workforce in Africa. The industry is “crying” for many skilled, competent and committed  individuals to explore oil and gas resources.

The workforce shortage challenge in East Africa can be addressed by creating an education and training system that meet the standards of the oil and gas industry.

So, educating and training people who would capitalize on the new found oil and gas wealth is vital for the local industry development.

By training local people, the East African industry will be dominated by local workers and this will promote the locally based economy.

Oil industry  presents many technological challenges in the exploration and production of natural gas offshore.

The country has to decide: East African companies either invest in technical capability or leave it to international competitors.

When you educate and train the local workforce, the industry will be localized after a certain period thereby promoting the local economy.

The shortest route to meeting this challenge is through partnership and collaboration at the local level.

Private training providers have an opportunity to grow their business by training learners at national universities and colleges rather than relying on training staff at major oil companies –which is a “tiny” market.

On the other hand, local colleagues could provide access to training facilities and classrooms to private training providers. This is a cost-effective method and it will help them train local people quickly than they will if they build a new training center.

The challenges of building local workforce can be met through collaboration between international workforce and training providers as well as between government departments and international oil firm.