Educational Policy

Low-income countries face many challenges in their efforts to ensure access to jobs among the communities closest to mines or oil and gas operations, and the importance of basic literacy should not be underestimated. The presence of TVET skills is often identified as a key bottleneck in local hiring; in many countries, the quality of vocational education does not meet the standards set by extractive companies. This puts governments that have made concerted efforts to improve TVET training at an advantage; it suggests relatively shorter lead times for extractive projects in these countries, resulting in major savings and raising the attractiveness of the country for extractive industry investment.

National education policies favoring a strong foundation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills are considered essential to meet growing demand for professionals in the oil and gas and mining sectors. All countries can benefit from identifying and communicating promising practices (as well as barriers) in the development of technical workforce with STEM skills needed by extractive industries.

Coordinated industry-education partnerships, particularly at community colleges and in the early years of higher education, are considered critical to the future of energy and mining in developed and developing countries alike. These partnerships are designed to create competency-based educational pathways to careers across the industrial sector. Alternatively, where investment in TVET training is insufficient, companies may set up their own training programs.

Countries with large (or potentially large) extractive activity are well advised to also prioritize specialized tertiary education, which can become particularly important in the long run as the demand for academically trained natural scientists increases across industry and government. (However, as long as the extractive industry is limited in size, government investment in specialized tertiary education is unlikely to be cost-effective.) Governments in low-income countries can use a range of tools to ensure that interested nationals receive training as engineers and geologists; for example, they can provide scholarships to universities in other, higher-income, countries; establish teacher exchange programs with universities in other countries; or develop regionally based university programs wherein several neighboring countries pool their resources.