In the last few decades, Azerbaijan has been experiencing significant demographic changes, reflected in several ways: a change in the structure of the population and demand for new jobs, massive urbanisation of major cities, and migration in its various forms.
The gradual shift to a new economic growth model that is able to meet major challenges of job creation and the reduction of social and regional inequalities will require upgrading and making adjustments to human capital in the country. The real challenge is to develop human capital that is prepared to adapt to continuous evolutions.
Coping with the human capital needs of today and planning for policies that will ensure that global trends and drivers are enjoyed by all individuals is a challenging issue. In Azerbaijan many young people experience extended periods of unemployment, which can potentially hinder their skills development, future employability and earning capacity. A long period of unemployment spells risks leading to youth labour market detachment, especially among young women and men seeking their first job. The transformation of the world of work is an ongoing process, and it poses a significant challenge for businesses to cope with the skills they need. Bridging the divide, preparing young people for the world of tomorrow and making sure that people can be upskilled throughout the course of their life requires rethinking carefully how to deal with human capital and modernisation of education and training systems.
The government of Azerbaijan has put nurturing human capital as a key priority and developing new skills and capabilities of citizens is high on the agenda. A key focus is to proceed with structural and systemic change with sustained policy measures on quality and inclusiveness at all levels of education and training, both initial and continuing.
The actions undertaken to diversify the economy and to develop high value-adding activities in non-oil sectors alongside oil and gas industries have increased the demand for a competitive and professional workforce. From this point of view, the VET sector is assumed to provide advanced workforce training to meet the growing and changing labour market needs.
The skills development system should better support the national priority of economic diversification by addressing the shortage and waste of skills and further develop adult education in a LLL perspective. A shift to more targeted policy-making requires reliable data and sufficient data analysis. The newly established Labour Market Observatory under the Ministry of Labour is an important step in this respect and should be adequately resourced.
The VET Roadmap acknowledges that partnerships with employers is one of the critical prerequisites for taking the vocational education system to an advanced level and envisages that by 2025 employers will be fully integrated into the VET system, from the development of educational curricula to financing. The VET Roadmap envisages the establishment of 10 modernised VET centres of excellence across the country, which will provide training in the priority occupations that are in high demand in the labour market. Through further engagement of the private sector, the relevance of VET for human capital development is expected to improve. There is a high potential for promoting WBL in Azerbaijan, especially in the highly employment-relevant sectors, i.e. agriculture and tourism, that can support closing the gap between the demands of the labour market and the existing qualifications of the workforce.