Harare, Zimbabwe – As Zimbabwe’s nascent oil and gas sector develops, a critical skills gap threatens its long-term sustainability, warns Dr. Carol Clever Makoni, whose doctoral research provides a roadmap for securing the industry’s future.
In an interview, Dr. Makoni, who earned two Summa Cum Laude doctorates, revealed her research focused explicitly on skills transfer from expatriates to locals.
She was motivated by the sector’s current reality: dominated by foreign expertise with limited local technical hands-on exposure.
“Skills cannot be left to chance,” Dr. Makoni asserted. “Without deliberate systems such as mentorship, practical training, and continuous evaluation expertise simply evaporates. With systems, knowledge becomes embedded, sustainable, and transformative.”
She presented three immediate, evidence-based actions for government and industry: institutionalizing mandatory mentorship programs in expatriate contracts, embedding robust monitoring mechanisms to track skills absorption, and co-designing training programs to reflect Zimbabwe’s specific context.
These steps, she argued, would shift the balance from dependency to local empowerment.
