South Africa imports 5,000 critical skill workers

South Africa has issued 4,913 critical skills visas since 2020 to nationals from over 100 countries, with more than half (55%) of those going to people from Zimbabwe and India.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber revealed the information in a recent parliamentary Q&A, where he noted that the department exhausted “all efforts” to determine that no South African citizens or permanent residents had the necessary skills and qualifications to fill the positions before issuing the visas to foreign nationals.

“This was done in collaboration with the Department of Higher Education and Training. The methodology used to determine the critical skills is detailed in a Technical Report on Critical Skills published on the website DHET,” he said.

Out of the 4,913 visas issued since 1 January 2020, 1,794 were issued to Zimbabwean nationals for hundreds of different jobs.

The biggest job category for which Zimbabwean nationals were issued a critical skills visa was trainee auditors, followed by integrated development, software developers, nursing, and ICT systems analysts.

After Zimbabwe, the second biggest import country for critical skills in South Africa is India, where 918 visas have been issued.

The list below outlines the top 20 countries that have been issued critical skills visas to South Africa:

Country Visas

Zimbabwe 1,794

India 918

The Democratic Republic of Congo 295

Nigeria  286

Cameroon 90

Germany 85

China 84

The United Kingdom 82

Kenya 75

The USA 75

Lesotho 63

France 62

Pakistan 58

Zambia 50

Swaziland 48

Angola 45

Uganda 41

The Netherlands 39

Ghana 36

Botswana 35

The country has also moved to implement a remote working visa, which should draw additional skills into the country.

International workers are seen as a short- and medium-term solution to the current skills shortage that many corporations in South Africa face, with skilled workers – especially those with STEM and IT skills – often heading in the other direction.

South Africa’s battle with skills is happening on all fronts.

Within the country itself, there is a dearth of skills that match the growing needs of businesses—and the skills that are present are either snapped up by companies, head for the exit due to various ‘push’ factors, or are working remotely for international companies.

Other countries outside of South Africa are also looking for skills, and local talent is ripe for the picking.

Countries like Australia, Canada, Germany and the UK have all pointed to dire shortages of skills in certain fields and expressed a willingness to draw these skills to their shores—and for South African talent with itchy feet, the prospects are often too inviting to ignore.

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