- Building policy skills in South Africa will enable the country to tackle its policy challenges through formulating and implementing good policy.
- A democratic policy process assumes that people in various societies can be part of influencing national policies, but many people in developing societies are not organised. Among them are unemployed workers, who may constitute about 50% of the labour force and may not have the necessary skills.
- The skills needed to build policy capacity include: policy formulation, policy analysis, predicting policy outcomes, examining policy options, understanding policy context, implementation, evaluation, and policy advocacy.
- There are insufficient tertiary institutions in South Africa offering courses in the general field of government and public administration as a way of tackling policy skills training.
- To broaden access to training in policy skills, development organisations serving civil society should consider including programmes in the field of government and public administration.
