South Africa’s provinces have progressed with the production of artisans, in line with Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande’s declaration of 2013 as the 'year of the artisan', the ninth Human Resource Development Provincial Coordination Forum meeting heard on Friday.

Most of the reports given during the meeting recorded progress specifically with regard to the Artisan and Technician Development Initiative, the Human Resources Development Council (HRDC) said in a statement.

The North West province reported that 141 artisans had been certified by the end of 2013, with a plan in place to produce more than 500 artisans a year from 2014.

Meanwhile, the Northern Cape reported that over and above training and development, two training centres of excellence had recently been completed with two more green skills centres for artisan development under construction.

This was in addition to the newly established university in the province, which had, along with another new university in Mpumalanga, completed its first intake earlier this year.

Further, Gauteng reported 100 vocational development programme graduates had been identified for the automotive artisanal programmes, with 90 placed in electrical engineering learnerships.

The province also reported exposing 351 technical vocational education and training learners to the petrochemicals industry, with 15 students under training at Rand Refinery’s skills development initiative, the Gold Zone, in Germiston.

"Accumulatively, these numbers show a positive trajectory in dealing with the shortage of artisans in the country and, ultimately, building the human resource development base required to ensure a prosperous and inclusive South African society and economy,” HRDC secretariat head Brenda Ntombela commented.

Following the success of 2013’s 'year of the artisan' campaign, the Department of Higher Education and Training also decided to embark on a ten-year campaign called “2014 - 2024 Decade of the Artisan” under the theme "It's cool to be a 21st Century Artisan”.