Introduction

Industrialising countries in Southern Africa and worldwide suffer from a perennial shortage and mismatch of skills produced by tertiary institutions and those required by industry due to insufficient training by under-qualified academics. Foreign aid agencies have assisted in addressing this challenge, but this fell short of the requirements. Many engineering academics trained to the PhD level in industrialised countries usually opt to remain abroad to utilise their skills more gainfully. This chapter introduces the research instigated to address these challenges by drawing reference to the previous book that laid the foundation for narrowing the gap between industry and academia. The chapter forms the basis on which the formulation of doctoral training was premised for developing homegrown solutions for skills development and capacity building.