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Dialogue towards jobs for youths
December 27, 2018 at 15:11

news image Creating employment for the youth is a daunting challenge to governments, technocrats, and the youth themselves. Parliamentarians feel the pressure as representatives of the people. Voices on lack of salaried and self-employment persistently reach their ears and are expected to provide solutions. Accordingly, the law makers have been working on ways to get around the challenge. The North-South Dialogue Framework is one approach they are pursuing to ensure education and training enhanced the youth’s employability and increased productivity for more opportunities for the youth. Although youth employment mirrors cross-cutting issues that include, fiscal, labour and social security; parliamentarians consider technical and vocational training an important factor in fighting poverty and employment creation. Utilising the North-South Dialogue Framework, the National Assembly of Zambia (NAZ) and the Austrian Parliament, gathered experts, researchers, stakeholders from the administration, civil society, and technical and science think-tanks to share detailed analyses and map-out ways to improve technical education and vocational entrepreneurship and training (TEVET) for youth employability in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.4. The Central Statistical Office provided the statistical perspective of youth population vis-à-vis Zambian labour force, Zambia Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (ZIPAR) provided evidence-based representation of youth employment challenges, and TEVETA shared challenges in TEVET and industry collaborations for enhanced relevance of skilled labour force in the country. Zambia National Education Coalition (ZANEC), University of Zambia, youth groups and the UN organs were among stakeholders strategizing how to tap from the Zambian youthful population for long term and stable social, economic and political stability. The SDG 4 that anchored discourse focuses on inclusive and equitable quality education for lifelong learning opportunities. This SDG under the North-South Dialogue is aligned to Zambia’s Vision 2030 whose objective, inter alia, aims at having an increased number of youth who have relevant technical and vocational skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship. Government aims have an education system that improved equal access to quality learning facilities. Underpinning questions to stakeholders were on: i) what policy and strategic approaches can help overcome the employment challenge, ii) what does the Zambian economy needed, iii) what do the youth expect, and iv) what challenges does education and training face that stifled youth employability. Challenges in technical and vocational education and training that framed the discourse were access to training, quality and relevance of training, gender parity, and long term financing. The number of training institutions in TEVET is not correlating with the number of the youth seeking training opportunities. The sector absorbs about 35, 000 learners compared to huge numbers that leave school. Training institutions in the sector are also concentrated (82%) in Central, Copperbelt, Lusaka and Southern provinces, denying training opportunities to the youth in other provinces. Thus, these provinces have limited pools of skilled human resource to stimulate and drive development. Skilled labour to undertake developmental projects in these areas is imported from elsewhere, thus depriving people and provinces of income. Further, quality of TEVET is affected by low investment in modern equipment and workshops and the lack of capacity building on trainers. Most trainers have been trained on old equipment and have remained behind on new technologies. Thus trainers cannot adequately impart skills using modern equipment, hence affecting the quality of skills supplied to industry. The quality of TEVET also has a bearing on the relevance of the training. Non up-skilling of trainers negatively affected delivery of relevant and quality training. Coupled with low industry – training collaboration, the relevance the labour force for some industries is more challenging. Equity wise, technical and science programmes in TEVET are dominated by males. TEVET statistics from 2010 – 2017, show that 92% and 56% of the learners in technical and science programmes were male. Financing the TEVET sector has been the other challenge. Due to the sector’s cost-intensiveness, less investment have been done. It requires workshops and equipment to ensure relevance of training and equipping learners with ample practical skills for ease transition into the industry. The Skills Development Fund (SDF), which was introduced in 2017 is key in addressing the TEVET financing challenge. The SDF financing pillars are on infrastructure development, equipment and tools acquisition, informal sector training, pre-employment scholarships and strengthening learning systems. Despite these challenges, TEVET provides many opportunities for lifelong learning. The sector offers opportunities for hands-on and entrepreneurial skills to many citizens. Social, economic and political stakeholders place high value on the sector to empower citizens with diverse skills to improve their productivity at different scales. The North-South Dialogue of Parliaments project is one of the steps aimed at finding solutions to the TEVET sector by including relevant stakeholders in defining ways forward. The platform seeks to create opportunities for effective training–industry collaborations through legal and policy realignments towards quality, inclusive and equitable lifelong learning. The action points for the National Assembly of Zambia arising from the discussions are i) amending the Apprenticeship Act of 1965, realigning it to Minister of Higher Education from Ministry of Labour and Social Security, and providing for incentives under the Apprenticeship Act for enhanced industry and training sector collaborations; ii) facilitate the creation of skills clusters to serve as advisory groups on skills gaps and mismatches; iii) conducting a skills audit; iv) creating a Skills Repository for work permit decision-making after ascertaining non-availability of skills investors were importing; and v) ensuring skills transfer was defined by the law to ensure verifiability and the creation of skills clusters for continuous sectoral standards setting for inclusion in the curriculum were emphasized.