Industry perspectives on supply chain curriculums in South Africa

Abstract: The shortage of supply chain management skills in South Africa is a major constraint to sustainable economic growth and development. Academic institutions educate thousands of students every year, however the supply chain talent shortage still remains acute. This implies that not enough individuals are being trained to meet the growing demand for skills or curriculums have not evolved to meet the changing needs of the dynamic supply chain industry. The purpose of this paper is to review the skills required by the supply chain industry in South Africa and to determine whether current educational offerings are meeting these needs. This paper provides the results from an industry survey, conducted in 2016 by the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies’ (Africa). The survey assessed skills requirements for supply chains in South Africa and also attempted to determine areas in which curriculums are not meeting industry requirements. The findings from this research strongly indicate that current educational programmes are ill-equipped to meet the complex demands of modern supply chains. It further provides empirical evidence of the gaps within the current supply chain education programmes and suggests some educational interventions to address these in the future in order to create the types of supply chains that are needed in developing economies. This research provides an original contribution in that it is the only regular survey which gauges industry perspectives on logistics and supply chain talent, competencies and educational interventions in South Africa