Globalisation, Education and Training: Insights from the South African Automotive Sector -

Education and training has a strong relationship with globalisation. te Velde (2004) suggests three major elements of this relationship. First, the quantity and quality of existing education and training in a country helps determine the extent to which a country is likely to be involved in globalisation. Thus, having an “acceptable” level of skills and knowledge is a necessary condition for a range of foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions. This is not to say that all FDI requires high levels of education and training but that the nature of FDI will bear a relationship to the types of skills available or potentially available. Equally, education and training is clearly part of the equation when understanding the dynamics of “brain drain”, “brain gain” and “brain circulation”. Thus, education and training levels are important factors in both the importation of employment and its exportation.