An Education Needs Assessment of CARIFORUM Firms

and research, trade agreements and competitiveness (Caribbean Export Development

Agency 2022a).

Sector-Specific Skills Gaps

Existing reports focus mainly on traditional sectors, notably agriculture and agro-processing, light

manufacturing, tourism, the creative sector, and non-tourism services. The green

economy/renewable energy is one of the newer fields also gaining traction is some of these reports.

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Agriculture and Agro-processing

Belize’s 2018 and 2019 studies on Measuring Curricula Mismatch for Food Processing and

Tourism Sectors, Dominican Republic’s 2020 Labour Market Assessment, Guyana’s 2017

Labour Force Survey and Jamaica’s 2017 Labour Market Sector Study all outlined skills

gap in their respective agriculture and agro-processing sectors. Table 6 highlights the skills

gaps identified by each country. The main areas of commonality in Table 6 appear to be

business/entrepreneurial skills and food safety skills. The lack of business skills in this

sector seem s to be a regional challenge based on findings from the CDB and FAO’s Study

on the State of Agriculture in the Caribbean, where they found inadequate entrepreneurship

skills among farmers as a major factor constraining the sector’s productivity ( FAO and

CDB 2019). The growing emphasis on food safety skills and training appears somewhat

linked to improving the agro-processors ability to meet international certification

requirements b ased on inferences made in Jamaica’s 2017 Labour Market Sector Study

(USAID 2017). Drawing from Annex 3 there is also a push for technology-focused skills

in agriculture, with some national development scholarship programmes outlining digital

agriculture, agricultural engineering technology, and post-harvest technology as priority

training areas.

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