Page 18 - Professorial Lecture - Prof Nengomasha

5. Education and training

As with the records and archives management practice, the training in
records and archives management has been transforming. Archives and
records management education has developed at an exponential rate in
the last decade in Africa. Graduate education is essential for the growth and
development of the profession. The last decade has seen more training schools
offering training programmes in the profession resulting in more professionals
being trained in Africa and specifically in the home country (Katuu (2015; 2022).
VanderBerg (2012) argues for home country training which Katuu (2022) supports
for “optimal positive impact”.

In Namibia graduate and postgraduate pogrammes have been developed
in line with the National Qualifications Authority guidelines to ensure that the
programmes meet the needs of the local industry and employers whilst meeting
quality and be comparable with similar qualifications in other countries. A
research component in the final year of the graduate programme heeds the
argument for research for strengthening the profession (Dearstyne, 1999; Katuu,
2015). Studies done by undergraduate and graduate students of the University
of Namibia have provided information on the status of records and archives
management in the country highlighting the opportunities and challenges,
significantly contributing to the body of knowledge on transformation of records
and archives management.

One of the impacts of digital information is the blurring of distinctions between
records management and formerly separate, distinct fields. As far back as
1994, Dearstyne had predicted that records management of the future was
likely to bear only a passing resemblance to records management in the 1990s
(Dearstyne, 1994). He made reference to the change in title of the Records
Management Quarterly Journal to The Information Management Journal as an
example how the records management profession was repositioning itself. Taking
note of convergence brought about by ICTs, and stakeholders’ consultations, a
change of curriculum is eminent at the University of Namibia.
A skills survey of members of National Information Workers Association of Namibia
(NIWAN, 2020), most of whom were employed by the public service, found that
records management professionals and librarians alike expressed an interest to
have further training in advance IT skills such as digital curation and preservation.
The records management practitioners further indicated electronic records
management and the librarians indicated electronic resources management.
These findings confirm observations by Choi (2020, p. 212) who argues how

Prof. Cathrine Nengomasha | Professorial Lecture 18