These critical skills are getting harder to find in South Africa

High-level skills are becoming harder to find in South Africa, with professional groups and businesses saying that the hunt is always on to find the necessary skills to meet demand.

According to migration specialists, Xpatweb, C-suite managers are among the most in-demand skills in South Africa that businesses are struggling to find, often having to recruit internationally.

In the group’s latest Critical Skills survey, 10% of large corporates and multinationals in South Africa listed this as a challenge.

Drilling down into the survey ­results, it is clear companies find it especially difficult to fill the positions of:

• Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
• Chief Operating Officer (COO)
• Chief Financial Officers (CFO)
• Chief Technology Officers (CTO)

In 2024 the need for experienced CEOs increased by two percentage points to 21%, compared to 2021. The demand for COOs spiked from 24% of respondents battling to attract these experts in 2021 to 28% in 2024.

“Almost 24% and 17% of respondents, respectively, indicated they have to look far and wide for suitable Chief Financial Officers and Chief Technology Officers,” the group said.

The survey is the largest among verified employers about the critical skills that are most in demand in South Africa.

Marisa Jacobs, Managing Director of Xpatweb, said that as corporates expand globally, they look for executives with international experience to take their businesses into Africa and beyond.

“This means they must often expand their recruitment efforts internationally,” she said.

However, the battle for skills is not just at the management level. Other high-level skills such as data scientists, data analysts, developers and technical skills in machine learning and AI are also in hot demand—and hard to come by.

Speaking at a recent media engagement, Capitec chief executive Gerrie Fourie noted that the fight for these skills—and other professional skills in the banking sector—is difficult to come by and that the battle to find, attract and retain these skills is highly competitive.

For Capitec, in particular, data science and data processing are core to its business, and the group currently employs over 500 people in the field.

A war on all fronts

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.

According to Xpatweb, complications at Home Affairs and other local issues—like high levels of crime—also make it difficult for local companies to recruit the skills they need, or dissuade those skills from making the move.

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.

According to Australia’s Skilled Priority List 2024, the most in-demand job sectors are healthcare, engineering, Information technology (IT), and education. Additionally, the higher proportion of professional group occupations in shortage was largely driven by health and ICT professionals.

Canadian immigration consultant Nicholas Avramis from Beaver Immigration said the number of professionals moving to Canada is partly due to South Africans wanting to leave.

Aramis told BusinessTech that Beaver Immigration had seen a 50% spike in interest from doctors and nurses who want to immigrate to Canada. The same goes for IT specialists.

Projections indicate that by 2035, Germany’s ageing population will face a shortage of 7 million skilled workers. The country’s top five most in-demand job sectors are Engineering, Information Technology (IT), Biotechnology and Life Sciences, Data Science and Analytics, and robotics and Automation.

Sectors in the UK with large shortages include construction, information technology and communications. The UK’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) added that skills shortages in technical and engineering disciplines are set to worsen, and there is also a notable shortage of senior business positions.

Read: The Netherlands is hunting for South Africans with these skills – paying up to R1.6 million