Maître-Assistant au Département de Sociologie, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Laboratoire de Recherches et d’Etudes en Linguistique, Psychologie et Société (LaRELiPS), Université de Kara, Kara, Togo
An effective education system is measured by the employment of the graduates it produces. Education systems in Africa are largely marked by rampant underemployment and unemployment rates. In Togo, these rates were 24.9% and 3.9% respectively in 2015. As the number of young people and their levels of education increase, the question arises as to whether they have the soft skills required to facilitate their integration into the workforce, especially graduates of higher education ? Indeed, after forty-five interviews conducted with managers of placement agencies for graduates, NGO managers and human resources directors of some companies that receive higher education graduates for internships, it appears that employers are asking more and more for socio-emotional (soft) skills than cognitive ones. The soft skills highlighted by these employers include: punctuality, humility, commitment, curiosity, integrity, flexibility and proactivity. From the point of view of know-how, apart from the mastery of English and the computer tool which are transversal knowledge, we must retain the sense of organization, the ability to do personal research and to produce reports within the deadlines.