A talent-gap report has indicated that Sub-Saharan Africa will need between 1.6 million and 2.1 million additional project professionals in next 10 years, an increase of 75%, yet education and training systems across the continent aren’t keeping up.
The result, according to the report conducted by Project Management Institute, PMI, shows skills deficit that threatens to stall progress in the very sectors most central to the energy transition: construction, energy, infrastructure, and technology.
George Asamani, Managing Director of PMI Sub-Ssharan Africa also states that data from the Institute suggests that about 10% of global project investment is lost annually due to poor performance. “In Africa’s infrastructure pipeline, this translates into billions in wasted investment”.
According to Asamani, this is where project management becomes the unsung cornerstone of Africa’s green economy. “A just transition demands talent transformation, the deliberate effort to retrain and redeploy workers from the old energy economy into the new one”, he said.
He believes that Africa’s green transition will not succeed solely on goodwill. “Governments, development partners, and businesses must act now to integrate project management training into climate finance and just transition plans. Building capability must be accompanied by building capacity. If climate investments continue to outpace human investments, the gap between ambition and delivery will only widen”.
He said PMI is already collaborating with governments, academia, and industry across Africa to strengthen project delivery capability.
These partnerships, he said are embedding project management frameworks into public infrastructure initiatives, while universities are integrating PMI-aligned curricula to prepare a new generation of professionals for project-based roles in the green economy. “By prioritising skills development alongside climate ambition, Africa can ensure that its energy transition is not only visionary but viable”, Asamani said
