Polemag #32 Editorial: Developing skills, releasing potential
Check out the latest edition of IIEP-UNESCO Dakar's News Magazine, which focuses this time around on Developing skills, releasing potential, and stay up to date on what's been happening across our programmes.
By KOFFI SEGNIAGBETO - HEAD OF IIEP-UNESCO DAKAR
With over 10 million young people entering the labour market every year and informal employment close to 90 per cent, Africa and the development of its youth’s skills are now at the heart of the international community’s priorities. This awareness is, however, relatively recent. In fact, it was only in 2015, with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), that full employment and decent work for all were established as priorities for the international community, thus placing human capital at the very heart of development concerns.
It is noteworthy that the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning was one of the first actors to make the education-training-employment transition an essential pillar of education and training policies on the African continent. The Platform of Expertise on Vocational Education and Training (PEFOP) was launched in 2015 with the support of the French Development Agency, to contribute to renovated Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) policies in Africa in favour of growth and employment. Through the development of public – private partnerships, certification frameworks, professional experience validation mechanisms, and pooling of resources among African countries, etc., IIEP has, via PEFOP, endorsed a larger number of countries in implementing multiple reforms on the continent.
Today, supporting renovated TVET policies is an integral part of IIEP’s work in Africa. Over the coming months, our Institute will be contributing to the Regional Vocational Training Programme (PROFOR), a new major regional partnership between the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) and Swiss Development Cooperation. One of the features of this programme will be to identify a series of occupations as priorities on a regional level and to develop the necessary tools for their formalization. IIEP is also partner to the regional project to support pastoralism in the Sahel aiming to strengthen the financial empowerment of youth and women through the development of vocational training for a series of promising occupations.
With these new initiatives, we are now, more than ever, alongside our partners and different countries, in order to participate together in releazing the potential of youth in Africa and contribute to the economic development of the whole region.
