Learning Design for Future Skills Development in Small State Contexts

The small Southern African states of Mauritius and Eswatini, with respect to their high levels of digital literacy and telecommunications infrastructure, have great potential for meeting future challenges as regards capacity building and developing a globalized workforce. However, the weaknesses of a decoupled University-Industry R&D collaborationCollaboration, low-level business sophistication, a lack of appropriate knowledge workers, and manifest skills mismatches could create a difficult future for university graduates in these two countries. Within an African context, and with heavy reliance on imported and globalized products and resources, there is a common need for building resilience, self-efficacy, intra- and entrepreneurialEntrepreneurEntrepreneurial SkillsSkillEntrepreneurial Skills skills, emotional intelligence, and growth mindsets as essential competencies for our future “peopleware”, as opposed to hardware and software. This concept, made popular by Lister and DeMarco, in the context of increasing digitization, brings back the softer and more discerning human elements in times where algorithms are increasingly making decisions and influencing our behavior. This chapter presents an attempt to equip recently graduated young citizens with a set of transdisciplinary skillsTransdisciplinaryTransdisciplinary SkillsSkillTransdisciplinary Skills and competencies which can build the above-mentioned important attributes and values along with the depth of academic knowledge gained at the university. As small state developing countriesDevelopDeveloping Countries with colonial backgrounds, our strong sense of community, togetherness, resilience, faith, and tolerance should permeate within our intellectual siege.