The Deputy Minister of Education, Dr Clement Abas Apaak, has urged African leaders to discard the long-standing perception that Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is a pathway reserved for students with weak academic abilities.
He said rather TVET must be embraced as a first-choice option if the continent was to build a skilled workforce capable of driving socio-economic transformation.
Dr Apaak made the call at the Africa Skills for Jobs Policy Academy currently underway in Nairobi, Kenya.
The four-day programme, which opened on Tuesday, brought together policymakers, experts and private sector players to deliberate on reforms to strengthen TVET across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Being organised by the World Bank, in partnership with the Government of Kenya and the Inter-University Council for East Africa, programme aims at addressing youth unemployment by aligning training programmes with labour market needs and promoting upskilling in priority sectors.
“There is this tendency to believe that it is students who are less competent academically who are to take up technical and vocational education and training. We have a concerted plan of action to change this mindset. Vocational and technical education cannot be a second option. It must be a first option,” he stated.
Dr Apaak explained that the government was deliberately expanding access to technical institutions across the country.
Out of about 900 second-cycle schools in Ghana, he said, fewer than 300 were technical and vocational institutions, a situation the government was determined to improve.
He also pointed to the introduction of the National Apprenticeship Programme as part of measures to support young people outside the formal school system.
The initiative, he said, was designed to cater for about 1.5 million Ghanaian youth who were neither in school nor in training, stressing that “This programme is to put them through competency-based training, certify them, and deploy them into the labour market.”
The Deputy Minister emphasised that repositioning TVET and scaling up opportunities would not only reduce unemployment but also help Africa achieve sustainable development.
He noted that his outfit was implementing a comprehensive skills development framework, which earmarks significant investment for modernising technical institutions, upgrading equipment and retraining instructors.
These reforms, he said, were aimed at aligning training with emerging labour market demands, particularly in technology, green energy and industrial processing.
BY TIMES REPORTER
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