Kenyan TVETs To Benefit From Sh35 billion EA Projects By World Bank
At least 16 Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutes from Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia are meeting in Mombasa to discuss the ongoing implementation of the Sh35 billion East Africa Skills for Transformation and Regional Integration Project (EASTRIP), which is funded by the World Bank
Four Tanzanian TVET Centers of Excellence, seven Ethiopian TVET Centers, and five Kenyan TVET Centers were chosen to implement EASTRIP flagship projects in transportation and infrastructure, power and energy, manufacturing, and ICT.
According to Tom Mulati, Director of Technical Education at the Ministry of Education, middle-level colleges from three East African countries have gathered to discuss the project’s core challenges as well as other Covid-19 issues.
“We are here to assess the challenges and see how we can move forward in the implementation of this noble project together with our partners from the World Bank,” said Mulati during a press conference held on the eve of the four-day conference at the PrideInn Paradise Hotel Mombasa
He stated that the EASTRIP project aims to provide young people in East African countries with technical and vocational training skills that will allow them to freely move across borders to find work.
The goal of this project is to improve youth skill development so that they can move from one country to the next for training and employment in the fields of construction, transportation, blue economy, and textile.
He went on to say, “It’s competency-based education and training.
Coast National Polytechnic, one of the TVET institutions chosen to implement a World Bank-funded project in Kenya, will implement a Sh900 million regional maritime Centre of Excellence in Kwale County.
According to the institution’s Chief Principal Anne Mbogo, Sh500 million has been budgeted for the construction of the Centre, with another Sh400 million budgeted for the procurement of training equipment at the proposed regional maritime Center of Excellence, which is expected to train over 500 trainees once completed.
among the Kenya TVET institutes implementing the Sh6.8 billion World Bank-funded East Africa Skills for Transformation and Regional Integration Project include Meru National Polytechnic (building infrastructure project), and Kenya Institute of Building and Highway Technology (highway infrastructure),
Others are Kengen Geothermal Institute (Geothermal project) and Kisumu National Polytechnic (Textile project).
Similar projects were also underway in Ethiopia and Tanzania, where the World Bank had allocated Sh29 billion to increase access to and improve the quality of technical vocational education training programs for youths in the three countries.
The 16 TVET institutes in the three countries are expected to double their capacity and enroll 20,000 students per year in both long-term and short-term training programs in the targeted disciplines by the end of the six-year investment period.
The project is also expected to directly benefit nearly 60,000 students, with female students accounting for 30% of the enrollment.
Also Read:
At the end of the project, at least 310 employees will benefit from industrial attachment programs, and 230 employees will benefit from foreign exchange programs.
Employers in the targeted industries will benefit from a larger and more qualified pool of skilled labor as well.
The regional initiatives funded by the project, such as an annual regional skills competition and the formation of a regional TVET council, will aid in the promotion of TVET in the region.
Kenyan TVETs To Benefit From Sh35 billion EA Projects By World Bank
