PRESS RELEASE: Government Deepens TVET Engagement

Dr Fred Asamoah - Left. Mr. Detlev Jahn Axel - Right

As part of efforts by the government to ensure that every young person acquires relevant skills, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between the Ministry of Education (MOE) through the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) and GIZ Ghana for the continuous cooperation within the Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Component of the Program for Sustainable Economic Development (PSED) which implements the Ghana Skills Development Initiative (GSDI IV)

The MoU, which was signed on the 31^st of August 2020, extends the partnership between the two organizations to the 30^th of September 2022. It was initialed by Dr. Fred Asamoah, the Executive Director of COTVET and Mr. Detlev Jahn Axel, the Head of Program for the PSED at GIZ Ghana on behalf of their respective organizations.

The major thrust of the MoU is to promote a mutually beneficial cooperation between the two organizations during the implementation of the fourth phase of the Ghana Skills Development Initiative (GSDI IV), a project which is being co-funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and implemented in partnership with COTVET.

During the signing ceremony, Dr. Fred Asamoah, the Executive Director of COTVET stated that, “In as much as we need to set some standards to guide our collaboration and relationship going forward, we can always be flexible to make sure that this MOU is implemented successfully, depending on the situation at every point in time.”

GSDI IV started in October 2019 and is expected to be completed by September 2022. It aims to produce high-quality, standardized TVET to improve professional skills that meet the needs of the labor market, which is expected to promote the greater employability of young people in Ghana.

The project supports COTVET’s innovative approach to introducing competency-based training (CBT) standards and will focus more on a certain shift of interventions from the micro to the meso level with a stronger support on anchoring processes for the collaborative, competency-based training model within the Ghanaian public institutions, the TVET system and the private sector.

Direct beneficiaries of GSDI IV Project include job-seeking youth, apprentices, workers and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise owners in the formal and informal sectors. GSDI IV will also particularly motivate women to participate in trainings in TVET occupational fields that are predominantly dominated by men and vice-versa.