ABSTRACT
The forestry sector in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is seeing fewer field-ready technical workers, even as university forestry programs grow. This paper looks at how putting more focus on academic forestry training has changed the workforce, operations, and skill development in the area. By systematically reviewing 15 documents from 2021 to 2025, like skills audits, qualification standards, industry reports, and global comparisons, this study puts together information about the topic. The results show a reversed skills situation, where there are too many university graduates but not enough technicians with practical, on-the-job skills. This issue has raised training expenses for employers, reduced how much they can produce, and slowed down the use of new forestry technologies. Looking at Europe and Latin America, we see that systems that keep separate technical training tracks in two-track education models do a better job at running things efficiently and letting workers move around easily. The paper ends by saying that bringing back diploma-level technical training inside a standard SADC Qualifications Framework, along with ways to recognize past learning and joint public-private management, is key to bringing back lasting, competitive forestry production in Southern Africa.
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