PRETORIA, South Africa – A crippling shortage of skilled workers is hindering economic growth, curbing job creation, and driving away foreign investors in South Africa, one of the world’s most unequal nations.
The South African presidency has identified the skills shortage as the second-biggest impediment to economic growth, after crippling power outages.
The Department of Home Affairs, responsible for issuing visas to skilled workers, has been accused of exacerbating the problem by failing to streamline the application process.
Skilled worker shortages are most acute in areas such as engineering, science, information technology, and management-level personnel, according to a government report that called for urgent reform to the visa system.
One business organization, which includes car companies Volkswagen AG and BMW AG, has warned that delays in the process—it can take 48 weeks to have a visa application accepted—can threaten expansion plans, investment, and jobs in South Africa, where unemployment is running at 33%.
Schools, universities, and small enterprises also complain that the Department of Home Affairs appears unable to efficiently process work and residence permits and that it is hampering their operations.
The skills shortage has been exacerbated by high levels of emigration among skilled South African workers.
More than half of all visa applications between 2014 and 2021 were rejected, some due to errors made by applicants and officials in the home affairs department.
Annual applications for critical skills visas have more than halved, from almost 7,000 in 2017 to 3,077 in 2021. The number of applications for business and general work visas has also slumped.
A team set up by Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, found that between 2014 and 2021, a total of just 25,298 work permit visas—an average of 3,162 per year—were approved in a nation of 60 million people.
The Ramaphosa group recommended a raft of changes, including a points system and a trusted employer program, so that bigger companies would face less scrutiny.
Its report estimated that for every skilled employee brought into the country, more than one other job is created, and even a 1% increase in imported skilled workers would boost gross domestic product by 1.2%.
In October, the Department of Home Affairs took a step toward implementing the recommendations by asking companies that want to secure work permits for senior executives and technicians to take part in a pilot of a trusted employer program that would prioritize their applications.
If implemented fully, the changes could streamline the process. But progress has been slowed by political infighting in the Ramaphosa government and a crumbling civil service.
Family residence permits are often not approved at the same time as work permits, the department is understaffed, and its computers download documents at one-sixtieth the speed of those used in most banks. Many documents are lost, invalidating applications.
Anglo American Plc, owner of South Africa’s biggest platinum, diamond, and iron ore companies, has called on the government to resolve the visa problems “with urgency” and said the delays have disrupted project schedules.
Aaron Motsoaledi, South Africa’s home affairs minister, told a parliamentary committee in September that his department was understaffed and the visa regime was overly complicated.
He denied that there is a work permit backlog for critical skills applications, but said 74,000 people were waiting for residence permits of some kind.
