Promoting Skills Development in Africa

1
Promoting Skills Development in Africa

• Jürgen Schwettmann
• Deputy Regional Director
• ILO Regional Office for Africa,
• Addis Ababa

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More Jobs for Africas Young Women and Men

• Why skills development?
• The ILO and skills development in Africa
• How to meet the skills and job gaps Whats the
  strategy?
• Approaches Rural community-based training and
  upgrading informal apprenticeship
• Key features
• Challenge fund and public-private partnerships
• Empowering women
• Building up sub-regional cooperation
• Meeting immediate economic and environmental
  crises

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Skills Development

• increases the employability and earning potential
  of young men and women,
• improves the competitiveness and productivity of
  enterprises and economic sectors,
• expands the inclusiveness of growth.

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From a vicious to a virtuous circle

• Without skills the working poor remain trapped in
  low-skilled, low productive, low-wage jobs
• Workers without the right skills from cannot
  participate in economic growth especially those
  in rural areas and the informal economy.
• But skills development makes it easier to
• innovate
• adopt new technologies
• attract investment
• compete in new markets
• diversify the economy, and
• respond to external shocks
• .thus boosting job growth and improving
  productivity, quality and income

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The ILO and Skills Development in Africa

• One Regional Office (Addis), six sub-regional
  offices with technical teams, eight field
  offices
• TC portfolio in Africa exceeds regular budget
  allocations 90 of all TC projects are
  decentralized to field offices
• 2010-11 regional priorities focus on informal
  economy workers, rural producers and the youths
• The Decent Work Agenda for Africa and the Decent
  Work Crisis Portfolio for Africa both recognize
  the centrality of skills development for the
  continent.

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How we set priorities in Africa
ILO mandate Decent Work Agenda Standards
Global/regional priorities MDGs DaO donors
PRSPs, tripartite priorities
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Africa Skills Development as a Top Priority

• Closing the skills gap in Africa Target set at
  the 11th African Regional Meeting, Addis Ababa,
  April 2007 by 2015,
• Three-quarters of all African member States will
  critically review their national policies and
  strategies for education and training with the
  target of providing free universal primary
  education and (re)training opportunities for the
  working poor, especially young people and women
  and implement
• So that half of Africas workforce has obtained
  new or improved skills by 2015
• Policy reviews and strategies to be based on the
  involvement of the social partners employers
  associations and trade unions.

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ILO Support towards these targets

• Advocacy based on international labour standards
  and social dialogue
• Technical assistance delivered through pilot
  projects
• Inter-ministerial steering committees that
  include local government and social partners
• Emphasis on impact assessment and learning
  lessons
• Linking project experience to national policy and
  regional cooperation
• Research and tool development globally and
  country-specific application
• Accountability to member States as a member-based
  organization, at regional and global levels
• Cooperation at international levels and through
  bilateral and regional donors such as agreements
  undertaken through the Africa Commission

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Our Strategy

• Take skills development to where people are
  rural areas and the informal economy.
• Match training to employers needs and to
  self-employment opportunities.
• Upgrade the technical capacity of trainers.
• Make training available to disadvantaged groups.
• Ease the transition for youth from training into
  wage and self-employment.

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Preparing for the future

• Help communities identify growth potential
  sectors and their skill needs
• Make training available in new skills and
  occupations and avoid skill gaps
• Develop clear pathways from basic education to
  vocational training to the labour market
• Integrate skills into national and sector
  development strategies, and
• Include skills development into national
  responses to global drivers of change
  technology, trade, global warming, financial
  crisis

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Approach 1 Training for Rural Economic
Empowerment

• Developed from the principles of community-based
  training
• Expanded on the basis of learning from experience
  in West Africa and elsewhere Link training to
  employment
• Focuses on providing training to the poor,
  underemployed and disadvantaged
• Proven effective as part of crisis-response
  rebuilding and in improving livelihoods of women
  and young people
• Builds on partnership local and national
  government, local business, local training
  providers, community groups

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Approach 1 TREE Key Factors of Success

• Identify potential income generating activities
  before beginning training
• Work with local groups to assess the policy
  environment
• Build up self-sustaining cycle of identifying
  opportunities and training for them

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Approach 1 TREE Methodology

• Institutional organization and planning local
  ownership and management
• Identify economic opportunities and assess
  training needs
• Assess ability of local trainers master crafts
  persons, institutions, mobile training and
  enable them to improve training
• Deliver the training
• Provide post-training support for
  micro-enterprise development and access to wage
  employment
• Facilitate a system of ongoing monitoring and
  tracer studies that help both young people and
  local businesses

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Approach 1 TREE - Results

• About 75 of training graduates use their skills
  in wage or self-employment (compared to 30-40 in
  conventional vocational training)
• Tracer studies confirm improved incomes after
  TREE training
• Effective in creating opportunities for persons
  with disabilities, indigenous peoples, and
  communities emerging from conflict or natural
  disaster
• TREE has been mainstreamed into national rural
  development policies
• Local training institutions continue to use
  training tools they developed through the
  programme

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Approach 2 Apprenticeship Upgrading

• Apprenticeship is a widely used approach to
  training it is the best training opportunity
  for most young Africans today
• Apprenticeship is a system which provides
  training in productive skills and a financing
  scheme that enables young people to afford
  training
• The challenge is to improve the results

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Apprenticeship meeting the challenges

• Working.
• Master crafts persons and apprentices expect
  mutual benefits that justify the costs. Business
  incentives are good.

• but well?
• Relevance and quality of skills?
• Equity of Access?
• Employability of apprentices?
• Productivity and competitiveness of enterprises

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Apprenticeship policies and institutions

• Ways found to upgrade informal apprenticeship
• control the quality of skills (standard setting)
• Support recognition of skills in labor markets
  (certification)
• ensure dissemination of new skills and
  technologies
• improve access for girls and expand occupational
  choice
• provide access to the very poor (microfinance)
• respect the rights of workers

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Key Features Challenge Funds

• Challenge funds for master crafts persons
• Upgrade their own skills
• Expand apprenticeships within clusters and invest
  in greater safety and health and social
  protection for apprentices
• Challenge funds for TREE
• Mobile training units for rural areas
• Training for trainers in new technologies
• Improve working conditions to keep teachers in
  teaching
• Incentives for community planning that feature
  sustained local involvement and ownership

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Key Features Women Empowerment

• How these approaches promote equal opportunity
  and target womens skill development needs
• Through cooperatives and challenge funds, womens
  groups can identify opportunities and fill skill
  gaps
• Both kinds of training must help break down
  barriers to non-traditional occupations, but
• TREE and apprenticeship can make training
  available in womens own communities and cultural
  traditions
• Post-training access to micro-credit, employers
  organizations, employment services help overcome
  barriers women face in using training to access
  better employment

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Key Features Sub-regional Cooperation

• ILO works with regional economic commissions,
  such as ECOWAS, ECA and SADC, connecting
  ministries, employers groups and workers groups
  across countries
• Foster a learning environment, based on impact
  assessment and lessons from pilot projects
• Connects joint efforts in skills development to
  sub-regional policies on trade and migration

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Key Features Crisis Response

• Global Climate Change
• TREE programmes can be launched where communities
  need to adapt to changing weather patterns new
  crops, new infrastructure, new markets all offer
  opportunities if we prepare for them
• Global Financial Crisis
• TREE can help communities create more productive
  work for returning migrant workers and replace
  their remittances
• Better apprenticeships can help young people
  prepare for tighter labour markets

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Coordination is critical

• through strategies and tools such as
• Social dialogue role of employers and workers
• Skills forecasting and labour market information
  systems
• Local economic development agencies
• Value chain analysis
• Industrial clusters
• National development frameworks for
  inter-ministerial coordination and linking donor
  support to national priorities.

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Asante Sana

• Jürgen Schwettmann (schwettmann_at_ilo.org)
• Deputy Regional Director
• ILO Regional Office for Africa
• www.ilo.org/africa
• Christine Evans-Klock (evans-klock_at_ilo.org)
• Director
• Skills and Employability Department
• ILO, Geneva
• www.ilo.org/skills