Services

The Zambia African National Congress

SERVICES

In Zambia, on average, the service sector makes up about one-half of the GDP, but employs only about one-third of the labour force. Social services such as education and health services make up the bulk of the Zambia’s service sector. Though formal schooling and modern public health care expanded across our country, little has been done to cope with the ever increasing population and new diseases. The Zambian government has built countless schools, clinics, and other basic service facilities needed to improve the people's living standards, but all these have either no modern facilities or required medicine.

Commercial services are less developed in much of Zambia. The principal types of commercial services include transport, communication, tourism, banking, insurance, and import-export agencies. Most commercial service institutions and infrastructures remain concentrated in areas of modern development and major urban centres.

The Zambian service sector has several general features, characteristic of less developed areas, which combine to limit its impact on the national economy. First, the government is often the most important investor and employer, especially in the social services sector (which includes government, civil services, and defence). Second, the most lucrative aspects of the commercial service sector-banking, insurance, tourism, import-export, communication, and transport-are usually owned, controlled, or operated by foreign companies. Third, many of the commercial services required by Zambian smallholder farmers and cottage industry operators-such as transportation and credit services-are provided in the informal market, and are therefore un-documented. As more service institutions become locally and privately owned, and as they extend their reach to small-scale producers, they will benefit Zambia’s economy to a greater degree (from Encarta).

State of Learning

State of Learning will be a guiding strategy for post-Year 12 education and training. A key focus of the strategy is to build a skilled workforce with the capacity to support business and industry in a growing economy. State of Learning will be the state’s first strategy for post-Year 12 education and training. This long-term strategic framework aims to improve young people’s participation in education and training beyond compulsory schooling; to enable second chance learning opportunities for people of all ages; to build a skilled workforce with the capacity to support business and industry in a growing economy; and to create communities that value lifelong learning.

The strategy encompasses four key elements and a number of initiatives:

Guaranteeing Futures - Key initiatives include requiring participation in education and training beyond Year 12, implementing a Youth Pathways Policy, investing in colleges and district high schools, reviewing Year 11 and 12 curriculum and introducing area taskforces.

Ensuring Essential Literacies - Key initiatives include introducing an adult literacy taskforce and policy and supporting family literacy.

• Enhancing Adult Learning - Key initiatives include repositioning adult education, enhancing n workforce planning and research, lifting the state’s skills base, creating an education and business partnership and funding workforce development reinvigorating recognition of prior learning.

• Building Learning Communities - Key initiatives include strengthening learning partnerships, building community capacity through leaders, creating a new peak body for post-Year12 education and training and promoting learning for life.

A new Training Demand Model will be developed in a partnership between the Tourism Council of Zambia and the n Government. This model has the potential to link business activity through to skill needs and training demand through a system of data collection and analysis and has the possibly of being extended to applications across other industry sectors.

Knowledge and innovation

Innovation spurs productivity, which has been shown to have a direct relationship to revenues and employment - in other words, to economic growth and prosperity (Nova Scotia Economic Development, 2004).

Knowledge is widely considered an economic driver in today’s economy. The evolution of knowledge as an economic driver has been enhanced by the development of ICTs that have reduced the cost of collecting and distributing knowledge (European Commission, 2004).

The knowledge-driven economy brings new challenges for business and government in a context where:

Economic activity is increasingly globalised
Product life-cycles are shortening
Customers are more demanding
The complexity of technology is increasing.

Knowledge plays a vital role in fostering innovation. There is a theoretical and empirical link between the knowledge-based economy and economic growth. Other studies indicate that high-income and high-productivity countries tend to be intensive in the use of knowledge and technology. They argue that a consensus has emerged that innovation has a significant effect on output at the level of the firm, industry, state, and country.

Innovation is supported through a relatively complex system of interactions. International experience indicates that sustainable thriving economies are underpinned by strong innovation systems.

The public sector has a critical role in:

Providing the infrastructure to support innovation
Facilitating linkages between key institutions in the innovations system
Developing the human capital for innovation by delivering programs to firms focused on building capacity.

(Source: Nova Scotia Economic Development, Innovative Nova Scotia, 2004.)

Our Government will build stronger linkages between key innovation system players through collaborative arrangements with:

Research institutes such as the University of Zambia, CBU, NRDC, etc.
The Zambian Science and Technology Council and broader industry
The Zambian Innovations Advisory Board
Education and training providers
Technology incubation providers
Investors.

Our government is also underpinning innovation through investment in fibre optic telecommunications infrastructure to support innovative activity in industry.

The Department of Economic Development will deliver appropriate programs to further develop innovative capacity at the firm level. These programs will provide access to skills development, collaboration activities, early stage finance and assistance brokering.

In addition, the Department of Economic Development will implement a continuous policy-learning process, progressively reviewing its programs to ensure that the suite of services delivered to industry is appropriate and continues to stimulate innovation and business growth.

The ZANC Government will help n innovators and entrepreneurs, especially those in small to medium-sized companies and start-ups, who are seeking to commercialise innovative products, processes and services with the potential to generate employment, investment and exports.

A range of programs will be designed to enhance the business skills of n innovators and provides access to other organisations in Zambia that support innovation and entrepreneurship.

Way forward