Rubicon earlier this year secured control of PacMoz, a private Mozambique registered business administration company.
As part of its new strategy earlier this month it launched Futuro Skills, which aims to establish an integrated training facility in Pemba, northern Mozambique.
The facility will present a unique combination of social, life and vocational skills to its trainees.
"In the case of historically disadvantaged local Mozambicans, this training will socialise candidates to a modern work and communal living environment, and provide purposeful skills suited to a variety of projects and work roles," Rubicon said two weeks ago.
Partnership
Yesterday, it announced a partnership with SkillsDMC, which operates the Industry Skills Council for the Australian Resources and Infrastructure Industry, with the pair set to work in a collaborative partnership for the design and implementation of holistic workforce development program in the east African nation.
The partnership will offer Mozambique's emerging resources industry a unique solution to their local workforce skills challenges, and could be relevant in many other developing countries, Futuro said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
The proposed LNG projects in northern Mozambique have the potential to create 15,000 direct jobs and 685,000 indirect jobs, generating some $US39 billion per annum for the Mozambican economy.
There are also many construction, mining and infrastructure projects planned or underway which will create thousands more jobs, however Mozambique already has a significant shortage of skilled labour, while local labour laws limit the percentage of the workforce which can be recruited from abroad.
The gap must be filled with locally recruited candidates, who will need to receive periodic medical screening and health checks, as well as comprehensive training.
The operators of large capital projects, Futuro's target market, are required to produce workforce development plans which detail, amongst other things, their local content strategies and commitment to the training and development of the local workforce, with the aim of minimising their reliance on foreign skills.
The SkillsDMC and Futuro Skills partnership aims to offer a turnkey solution, including the design and delivery of skills forecasting analysis, workforce plans and implementation strategies, mapping and design of a task-based matrix aligned to Mozambican and clients' standards, verification of competency services, recruitment, medical screening of candidates, comprehensive vocational training and labour hire.
SkillsDMC is undertaking an Australian government funded project to develop a skills competency framework for the Mozambique government.
Rubicon is developing a six acre site at Pemba to offer the relevant training, initially to 200 candidates with a focus on work ready programs and construction skills training, eventually scaling up to 10,000 enrolements per annum.
Construction of the Pemba facility is scheduled to commence later this year, ramping up in the second quarter of 2016, with the first on-site enrolments scheduled for mid-2016.
Rebranding
The SkillsDMC-Futuro tie-up came on the same day that Australia Africa Mining Industry Group chairman Bill Turner called on Australia to take more notice of the nation's economic footprint in Africa, to help the continent realise its potential.
"Over the past two decades, investment by Australian mining and oil and gas companies has resulted in the creation of thousands of jobs on the continent and provided millions of dollars to governments by way of taxes and royalties," Turner said.
"The appropriate development of natural resources remains the quickest and surest way of African countries meeting the newly launched Global Goals for Sustainable Development, but for real gains to be made, the Australian government must engage more actively with Australian resource-industry companies active on the African continent."
To reflect the importance of Australian investment in both hard rock mining and oil and gas in Africa, AAMIG had voted for a name change, from the Australia-Africa Mining Industry Group to the Australia-Africa Minerals and Energy Group.
