The African Union Commissioner for Education, Science Technology and Innovation (ESTI), Professor Mohamed Belhocine, says Africa must focus on developing Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) across all levels of its education ladder if it desires to break out of the quagmire of underdevelopment.
He said the continent risked further losing out with the advent of artificial intelligence and development of digital tools and everything possible must be done to avoid such.
There is the need to shed the light on the issues because we will not develop in our continent without really developing TVET at all levels from the basic skills to the most sophisticated and innovative and new skills that are emerging with the development of artificial intelligence, the development of digital tools and digital methods and so on and so forth,” he emphasised.
Prof. Belhocine made the call when he paid a courtesy call on the Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, at his office in Accra yesterday.
The visit was on the sidelines of the maiden edition of Africa Skills Week which kicked-started in Accra yesterday.
He said the Africa Skills Week was really timely as it ticked one of the boxes in the roadmap for the theme of the African Union for the year.
The Commissioner said the event would help the continent mark out a very strong content for TVET education on the continent given the number of participants involved.
Dr Adutwum, for his part, said the government of Ghana had made TVET a very strong priority with several countries including China offering maximum help to the country in that direction.
He said under the leadership of President Akufo-Addo, existing TVET schools were being retooled while new ones were being built.
“There’s one existing school that has retooled TVET in all practical sense to make sure that the student can work with new equipment and tools just like what they would do in industry,” he stressed.
Dr Adutwum said school industrial alignment was being facilitated by the installation of new industry-level equipment for a TVET institution across the country.
He said it was important that foundational learning was made strong, adding that “I also believe that before they get to the TVET, foundational learning has to be strong, especially now that the country is looking at that spot between combining TVET and STEM.”
This he said was to ensure that the students produced were both minds on, and hands on as they are assisted with innovation.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL