Strategies for skills acquisition and work for people with disabilities in Southern Africa
This synthesis report arises from a technical cooperation project carried out in Malawi, South Africa and Zambia, 2004-06. This project aimed to carry out an exploratory assessment of skills acquisition strategies introduced in the participating countries through technical cooperation in recent decades, with a view to identifying effective strategies, and promoting effective training policies and programmes for disabled persons. The report starts with a brief overview of the countries’ socio-economic situation (Section 1) and their disability-related legislative and policy framework (Section 2). It then describes the approach taken in carrying out the studies in each country and presents the main findings of the surveys and case studies of people with disabilities who had different experiences of skills training and employment (Section 3). Following this, it summarizes the recommendations made following discussion of these study findings at tripartite-plus workshops in each of the countries in 2006 (Section 4) and steps planned to improve the training and employment opportunities for disabled people in the participating countries, arising from the studies and the consultative workshop.