Curtain closes on TVET conference for East African states |18 July 2019

Delegates in a souvenir photograph after the closing ceremony

Delegates agree on Mahé call for action 2019-2021

The East African regional workshop focusing on technical and vocational education and training came to a close yesterday with the countries agreeing on the Mahé call for action 2019-2021.

More than 40 representatives from 13 countries of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) East African Region met for a three-day workshop at Savoy Resort & Spa Seychelles to review the outcomes of the 2016 Mahé Process.

Those present included the Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

The workshop aimed to provide a structured and productive exchange among actors of training, certification and professional integration monitoring systems in order to develop a framework for quality assurance in the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) qualifications process in Eastern Africa.

The defining result of the workshop’s discussions is the Mahé call for action 2019-2021, which encapsulates six key actions that will help countries set up standardised qualitative frameworks for TVET programmes in these countries.

Six groups of countries are charged with work on and develop on the six key actions agreed in the Mahé call for action.

Teeluck Bhuwanee, workshop coordinator from Unesco’s regional office for Eastern Africa, noted that the countries are now in better position to state that the alignment and harmonisation process of Quality Assurance of TVET qualifications in Eastern Africa is on the way to becoming a reality.

“It will be up to countries, up to you experts, to ensure that your own country aligns its policies with the framework that will be produced that will allow for a greater integration of our countries in terms of mobility of entrepreneurs and qualified personnel to help enrich this part of Africa,” Mr Bhuwanee stated during his address yesterday.

“We now have a Mahé TVET Call for action and the countries’ commitment to act to develop the quality framework and qualification framework. This will help the region move forward to greater heights.”

In the call for action, Seychelles, Mauritius and Kenya have been grouped together and tasked with identifying not more than two sectors in which the harmonisation of qualifications in East African countries can be achieved.

Harmonisation of TVET qualifications and quality is said to be important because it expects to remove barriers allowing TVET qualifications from an East African country to be recognised in other countries in the region.

Mr Bhuwanee explained that this will in turn facilitate mobility of labour and facilitate movements of refugees.

“We increasingly want to achieve free trade between African countries, like the European Union. But for us to have freedom of trade, we must also have freedom of people and we are trying to see what skills are necessary so that there is harmonisation when people are moving from one place to another,” he remarked.

The remaining five actions that will be developed in the action call is the development of guidelines for quality assurance; supporting regional labour/refugee/migrants/forced/voluntary mobility; developing regional monitoring and evaluation tools; developing a regional TVET management information system and exploring options for regional open educational resources.

Nonetheless, Mr Bhuwanee noted that the greatest challenge in adopting similar benchmark frameworks are certain dissimilarities in each of the countries.

“Three or four countries such as Eritrea and Comoros do not have a national qualification framework at all, so first of all we will have to try to set this up,” Mr Bhuwanee stated.

It has been further agreed that the Mahé group would reconvene in 12 months, but no later than August 2020, to review progress.

Lead countries could provide quarterly progress reports to Unesco that will monitor the process on a regular basis.