A six-year project to develop industrial skills among Ghana’s workforce has improved the engineering and manufacturing skills of young people, promoted economic competitiveness and contributed to an improvement in the quality of life of beneficiaries and a reduction in poverty, according to an African Development Bank report issued on 15 July 2020.
The Development of Skills for Industry Project was implemented between 2013 and 2019 with $95.2m in financing from the African Development Fund of the bank.
Its goal was to support the Ghanaian government’s efforts to reform the Technical and Vocational Education Training sector and enhance technical and professional schools’ capacity at the intermediate level.
According to a statement by AfDB, the project achieved significant results.
Over the period, 2,010 students enrolled in two technical universities and 10 technical institutes (40.7 per cent of whom were women) were aided by scholarships, with the goal of increasing the participation of disadvantaged groups.
In addition, 2,500 apprentices, more than half of them women, benefited from this scholarship programme.
In total, scholarships were granted to 4,510 people, including 2,173 disadvantaged students,” according to the Project Completion Report prepared by a team led by Efua Amissah-Arthur, the social development specialist at AfDB.
“The project improved access to 13 public technical institutions in 38 districts of Ghana’s 10 former regions, through the development of new infrastructures such as laboratories, workshops, classrooms, dormitories, and housing for instructors,” it said.
The report added, “The project strengthened TVET capacity by training 149 instructors (20 percent of them women) and 800 master craftspeople in 38 districts to support the traditional apprenticeship programme.
“Twenty masters-level degree-training sessions that focused on a competency-based training approach to skills training were provided, as were five doctoral programmes for personnel at the College of Technology Education, Kumasi (CoLTEK). Furnishings, workshop equipment, ICT tools, and training manuals were also provided.”
The report emphasised that production units and entrepreneurial operational models for student use were successfully piloted in each of the 10 technical institutes that developed and strengthened students’ entrepreneurial and professional skills.
