“By 2025, 330 million young Africans will enter the labour market, and the African population will double by 2050. This means that more jobs need to be created to absorb the manpower and more food needs to be produced in order to counter food insecurity; how do we respond to this challenge and opportunity by improving the agricultural technical and vocational education and training? Mrs Estherine Fotabong (NEPAD Agency Head of Directorate for Programme Implementation and Coordination) announced in her key note speech in Pretoria on 9 April, 2013.
Mrs Fotabong was speaking at the two-day Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Agricultural Technical and Vocational Education and Training (ATVET) workshop on scaling up the current pilot implementation from 2014 to 2016. The scaling up of ATVET will focus on systemic curricular development in agriculture at national level in Africa.
ATVET was launched as a project of NEPAD CAADP in 2012, with the support of the German Development Cooperation (GIZ). It has since been piloted in Ghana and Kenya where the necessary pilot training measures are being developed, implemented and integrated into the national agricultural education systems. The successful approaches will then subsequently be extended to other partner countries within the CAADP implementation framework. CAADP is the AU-NEPAD long-term plan to improve food security, nutrition, and increase incomes in Africa’s largely farming based economies. It does this by raising agricultural productivity by at least six per cent per year and increasing public investment in agriculture to 10 per cent of national budgets annually. Since its establishment in 2003, over 40 African countries are actively engaged in CAADP at different levels and agricultural growth has spread to several African countries.
Also speaking at the ATVET workshop in Pretoria, Mr Martin Bwalya, Head of CAADP at NEPAD, reported that the goal of the workshop is to develop a strategy for the up scaling of the ATVET project, determining the expected outcomes and outputs as well as planning the necessary activities and input for this project to contribute to the overall 6% agricultural growth on the continent. Mr Bwalya highlighted the objective of the workshop as being, “The formulation of strategies for anchoring ATVET in the countries and regional institutions and other emerging initiatives within the framework of CAADP.”
Mr Ousmane Djibo (GIZ-CAADP Program Manager) drew attention to domestic financing and investment that are crucial for success in reaching equitable and sustainable growth in agriculture and its value chain. Mr Djibo emphasised that, “Another condition for growth is investment in human resources – how farmers are using their assets and smallholder farmers should become agri-preneurs.”
The GIZ Advisor at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development in Germany (BMZ), Mr Harald Pfisterer echoed the workshop’s participants’ consensus on the need for ATVET’s doors to be opened for other key players to come on board on undertaking this enormous task. This cooperative task includes NEPAD CAADP, agricultural private sector associations, individual private companies, farmer organisations, training service providers and development partners.
Country presentations from Namibia, Sierra Leone, Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya reflected the important role of vocational education and training in responding to Africa’s challenges of rural unemployment and income disparities; food and nutrition security; and climate change. The workshop closed on 10 April, 2013 with a firm commitment to mainstream vocational and technical education within national agricultural investment plans.
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Contact information
http://www.nepad-caadp.net/
Abraham Sarfo: CAADP ATVET Advisor Abraham.sarfo@nepad.org