Aims and objectives

SKILL (Stimulating Knowledge Innovation through Life-long  Learning) is an ambitious four-year programme initiated by SAVUSA in which VU University Amsterdam, Wageningen University and Research Centre, the Technical University of Delft, Maastricht University cooperate. In Spring 2012, both the Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam and UNESCO-IHE have joined the programme! The project is funded by the Dutch Embassy in South Africa.
The aim of the programme is to stimulate higher education and skills development in South Africa. This will be done focusing on South African Master's students, as well as prospective PhD candidates and a number of university staff members.

Skills development in general and in particular in higher education is crucial for competing and participating in the global knowledge economy. South Africa government has acknowledged that the single greatest impediment to its public infrastructure programmes - as well as private investment programmes - is the country's shortage of skills’. Skills development is therefore of utmost importance to South Africa and for that reason South African government set up the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) in 2006, as an important part of its wider economic policy framework, called Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative - South Africa (Asgi-SA). Among the main areas in need of skills development, as assessed by government, are '(...) engineering, science, finance and management, as well as technical and artisan skills'.

Various types of South Africa students, like Bachelor, Master, MPhil and PhD students, but also academic teaching staff, are important target groups of JIPSA. Higher education in both South Africa and the Netherlands could significantly contribute to the critically required development of skills in the various types of students in two ways:

• Training academic thinking and writing skills (from Master to PhD level, including teaching staff);
• Providing courses focused on developing and training practical professional skills in the designated areas (on Master's level).

The SANPAD study Cooperating for science on academic cooperation between South Africa and the Netherlands shows a huge imbalance between the large number of Dutch students going for (parts of) their study to South Africa and the only limited number of South African students coming to the Netherlands for (part of) their studies. This project will therefore also contribute to a more balanced number of exchanges between Dutch and South African Students.