Overview

The Linkage Model is a competency-based training approach that promotes an entrepreneurial mindset and the skills necessary to achieve sustainable livelihood. This “made in Africa” model integrates technical skills, business skills and workplace essential skills (literacy, numeracy, and communications with a workplace focus).

The model is unique in that it approaches entrepreneurship training not as the delivery of Start Your Own Business and Small and Medium Sized Enterprise (SME) management “addons”, but as an on-going exercise in critical thinking, problem solving and decision-making. According to the Linkage Model, entrepreneurship is more than well-honed technical skills and enterprise management theory – entrepreneurship is a way of thinking and approaching possibilities. To accomplish this, a project-based methodology is used, one that incorporates a five-phase design and problem-solving matrix.

In the Linkage Model, all training is delivered in a “real world” context. This means that actual customers and applied market research play a leading role in every project undertaken, and that costing and pricing, production planning, clearly defined design specifications, and quality control are integral components of the product generating process. Trainees address workplace essential skills (WES) and production-related business concepts in the same way entrepreneurs do – as integrated, contextualised aspects of SME activity.

Technical, business and workplace essential skills are acquired through the design, development and evaluation of “sellable” products and services that respond to targeted market demands. The Linkage Model operates from the premise that entrepreneurial skills are gained as a result of working through a number of projects – trainees need to practice and apply what they learn to gain expertise.

The Linkage Model assumes not everyone can or will be self-employed. Skills learned via the Linkage Model allow learners to be problem solvers within the workplace. In this Model, training for employment and training for self-employment are not mutually exclusive.

Because the Linkage Model is a training delivery model, it can be used with a wide range of technical and vocational subject areas. Implementation involves grouping technical skills into projects then inserting business and workplace essential skills at appropriate integration points – a format that reflects what actually exists in the SME sector.