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Articles Tags Africa

COVID-19 and the future of work in Africa: How to reduce income loss for formal sector employees

The COVID-19 global pandemic has brought unprecedented disruption to the global economy, already tremendously impacting livelihoods in Africa by reducing earnings and increasing poverty. While the scale and reach of the impact on employment will differ among countries and sectors, the main effects will be a drop in earnings (income) and increased underemployment (reduced hours) rather than unemployment. Quick action to reduce damage to livelihoods could reduce the social and economic costs this year and in the future.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2020/05/21/covid-19-and-the-future-of-work-in-africa-how-to-reduce-income-loss-for-formal-sector-employees/

Africa. Quality TVET for the successful training to employment transition of Africa’s youth

Analytical synthesis of the 2nd Regional Workshop for Exchange between Vocational Training Actors in Africa and their Mutual Strengthening, held in Nairobi from 18-20 June 2019.
http://www.iiep.unesco.org/en/quality-tvet-successful-training-employment-transition-africas-youth-13358
En français. Afrique. Des systèmes d’EFTP de qualité pour une transition formation-emploi réussie des jeunes en Afrique

Africa. Private sector development interventions and better-quality job creation for youth in Africa

This documet focuses on evidence around the creation of wage labour opportunities in the private sector, linking youth employment with a desired structural economic transformation able to absorb the predicted surge in supply of labour in the decades to come.
https://www.eldis.org/document/A102751

Africa. Exploring new sources of large-scale job creation: The potential role of Industries Without Smokestacks

Among the top challenges facing the continent continues to be the mismatch between trends and job creation. With rapid population growth and urbanization, African leaders must fashion and implement policies to encourage job creation and maintain service delivery.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/exploring-new-sources-of-large-scale-job-creation-the-potential-role-of-industries-without-smokestacks/

Africa. A collaborative approach to teaching and assessing 21st century skills in Africa

In today’s globally interconnected world—a world that is constantly and rapidly changing—21st century skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration are more important for students now than ever before. Content knowledge is no longer sufficient; students need to be able to think creatively and critically, work collaboratively, analyze information, and solve complex problems.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2019/04/25/a-collaborative-approach-to-teaching-and-assessing-21st-century-skills-in-africa/

Africa. Revamping Technical Vocational Education and Training through Public-Private Partnerships for Skill Development

Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) faces huge demands globally due to the high level of unemployment and the quest for technological development, industrialization and economic growth. For TVET to achieve its objectives of enabling leaners to catch up with the ever-changing living standard in a fast growing technological world and creating jobs for sustainable living, it must be strengthened through public-private partnerships (PPP) because government cannot singlehandedly shoulder this enormous task.
https://www.ajol.info/index.php/majohe/article/view/182125/171507

Africa. Capitalizing on Industry 4.0 in Africa

The impact of Industry 4.0—the next phase in the digitization of the manufacturing sector driven by computing power, connectivity, and new forms of human-machine interaction—will be wide and profound. It offers exciting opportunities for African manufacturers and small and medium enterprises to create new business models and integrate into global value chains. However, benefiting from Industry 4.0 requires overcoming a myriad of obstacles.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2018/07/03/capitalizing-on-industry-4-0-in-africa/

The Africa Competitiveness Report 2017

The working-age population in Africa is expected to grow by close to 70 percent, or by approximately 450 million people, between 2015 and 2035. If current trends continue, only about 100 million of them can expect to find stable employment opportunities. Countries that are able to enact policies conducive to job creation are likely to reap significant benefits from this rapid population growth. Those that fail to implement such policies are likely to suffer demographic vulnerabilities resulting from large numbers of unemployed and/or underemployed youth.
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_ACR_2017.pdf

Africa. Tapping into the power of technical education

African technical universities can help to add value to primary commodities and other natural resources, support economic transformation, provide technology solutions to small and medium enterprises, and contribute to wealth creation as part of enhancing technical and vocational education and training, or TVET, on the continent.
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20170521075334982

Africa’s Youth Employment Challenge: New Perspectives, Volume 48 Issue 3

Who are the youth and what is the problem? Are entrepreneurship and self-employment the solution? And what about youth aspirations? Such questions are addressed in this issue drawing from the literature on how development research affects policy and noting that it says little about how young researchers move into policy engagement.
http://bulletin.ids.ac.uk/idsbo/issue/view/225

Sierra Leone. They got mad skills : the effects of training on youth employability and resilience to the Ebola shock

This paper discusses a randomized control trial to measure the short-term impacts of a skills intervention among urban youth in Sierra Leone at the onset of the Ebola crisis. The intervention provided (i) technical skills training, plus on-the-job training; (ii) business skills training; and (iii) a mix of (i) and (ii). All groups received stipends and literacy and numeracy training. The findings support evidence that combining cash injections and skills training can stimulate employment and entrepreneurship.
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/700321493126707105/They-got-mad-skills-the-effects-of-training-on-youth-employability-and-resilience-to-the-Ebola-shock

Africa. Private TVET in Africa: understanding the context and managing alternative forms creatively!

Since the 1990s, there has been a growing sense from both national policymakers and international agencies of the importance of private Technical and Vocational Education and Training and skills provision in all regions. This pri-VET sector both through traditional apprenticeship forms and more formal sector oriented approaches have become an essential feature of the contemporary landscape. It is, however, a sector that is largely undocumented and its regulation is thus based on a less than nuanced understanding of its contribution to both the education and training system in general and as a complement to public TVET provisioning. The paper will seek to identify key features of the key trends of what is known about private TVET provision in Africa with a view to understanding the complexity of provision forms and its current importance in the region.
http://penerbit.uthm.edu.my/ojs/index.php/JTET/article/view/1269/999

South Africa. Exploring the Value of the Capability Approach for Vocational Education and Training Evaluation: Reflections from South Africa

In the late 1990s, South Africa faced the three-fold challenge of reforming the apartheid-divided institutional landscape of vocational education and training (VET) institutions; ensuring equitable access to skills; and reorienting its skills development system in line with the nation’s reinsertion into the global economy. A wave of institutional reforms was enacted which was followed by a large programme of evaluative research. While this body of work was both valuable and necessary, it nonetheless had several limitations. As part of efforts to overcome these, the authors suggest an alternative evaluation method that draws on insights from the ‘capability approach’. By putting the needs of people first – rather than the needs of the economy – the capability approach emphasises social justice, human rights and poverty alleviation in VET evaluation. This approach is more focused on the values and goals of individuals and institutions, while retaining the economic rationale as a key analytical tool and emphasising the continued importance of evaluation for the improvement of delivery and outcomes.
http://poldev.revues.org/1784

Africa. Who is going to pay for higher education in Africa?

Under the spotlight has been the question of how to make education accessible to millions of young students, in a continent with the fastest growing youth population in the world. At the same time, Africa’s universities and research institutes are mandated to produce independent, socially relevant research within a global higher education sector increasingly shaped by privatisation, competition, the commercialisation of research and academic job insecurity. The question of how to ensure student access to education and invest in research, against a backdrop of economic stagnation, rising living costs, and the threat of global recession, is a vexed one.
http://www.scidev.net/global/education/feature/higher-education-africa-who-pays.html?utm_source=link&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=global/global_rss.xml

China and Africa: a Post-2015 Focus on Higher Education?

China-Africa cooperation in higher education is characterized by south-south cooperation. Since the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2000, China has developed a number of African institutional development projects and offered scholarships and Chinese language learning to African students to promote mutual understanding and capacity building. China will obviously expand its cooperation with Africa in higher education after 2015.
http://www.norrag.org/en/publications/norrag-news/online-version/education-and-skills-post-2015-and-the-global-governance-of-education-agendas-and-architecture/detail/china-and-africa-a-post-2015-focus-on-higher-education.html

Africa. Road Map for Scaling Up the Human Resources for Health in the African Region 2012–2025

The Road map, which was developed with the appreciable contribution of critical stakeholders such as ministries of health, education, public services and finance as well as universities and training institutions regulators, professional bodies, civil society and nongovernmental organizations, defines strategic directions and priority interventions to be implemented in the period 2012–2025.
http://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/246128
En français. Afrique. Feuille de route pour augmenter les effectifs sanitaires : en vue d’une meilleure prestation de services de soins de santé dans la région africaine 2012–2025
http://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/80241

Africa. Transforming health professions’ education through in-country collaboration: examining the consortia among African medical schools catalyzed by the Medical Education Partnership Initiative

African medical schools have historically turned to northern partners for technical assistance and resources to strengthen their education and research programmes. In 2010, this paradigm shifted when the United States Government brought forward unprecedented resources to support African medical schools. The grant, entitled the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) triggered a number of south-south collaborations between medical schools in Africa. This paper examines the goals of these partnerships and their impact on medical education and health workforce planning.
The consortia described in this paper demonstrate a paradigm shift in the relationship between medical schools in four African countries. While schools in Africa have historically worked in silos, competing for limited resources, MEPI funding that was leveraged to form in-country partnerships has created a culture of collaboration, overriding the history of competition. The positive impact on the quality and efficiency of health workforce training suggests that future funding for global health education should prioritize such south-south collaborations.
http://www.human-resources-health.com/content/13/1/1

Africa. Advancing TVET for Youth Employability and Sustainable Development 17-18 September 2013, Abuja, Nigeria

The forum’s objective was to provide an opportunity for UNEVOC centres and TVET experts in Africa to address contemporary challenges with regard to the quality of TVET delivery, and demand-driven approaches to advancing GTVET and skills development for youth. Thus it provided a platform for sharing knowledge, experiences and promising practices (PPs) in TVET, focusing on GTVET and skills development for youth in the region. The objective was also to reinforce and extend regional networks and partnerships for advancement of TVET transformation towards regional harmonization and resource mobilization, and to further strengthen the UNEVOC Network consolidation process in the region.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002278/227845e.pdf

Africa. Quality assurance of teacher education in Africa

Teacher education refers to the policies and procedures designed to equip prospective teachers with the knowledge, attitudes, behaviours and skills they require to perform their tasks effectively in the classroom, school and wider community. Although ideally it should be conceived of, and organized as a seamless continuum, teacher education is often divided into these stages:
• Initial teacher training / education (a pre-service course before entering the classroom as a fully responsible teacher);
• Induction (the process of providing training and support during the first few years of teaching or the first year in a particular school);
• Teacher development or continuing professional development (CPD) (an in-service process for practicing teachers)
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002292/229200e.pdf

Africa. Improving Skills Development in the Informal Sector

Improving Skills Development in the Informal Sector looks at how formal education, technical and vocational education and training, apprenticeships, and on-the-job learning shape employment and earnings in the informal sector in five African countries. The book also examines a set of economic constraints to skills development and offers an insightful approach to improving employment outcomes.
http://issuu.com/world.bank.publications/docs/9780821399682

Ghana. From Prejudice to Prestige: Vocational Education and Training in Ghana

Higher skills levels are required to boost productivity, underpin economic growth, and create opportunities for individuals in Ghana. Technical and vocational education and training is (TVET), however, poorly perceived, often being seen as the reserve option for those unable to achieve the grades to enter into higher education. Unless TVET begins to be seen as the important component of economic and social development that it is, a lack of skills will ultimately have serious consequences for Ghana’s economy. These negative perceptions of the sector are limiting the career opportunities available to Ghanaian youth.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/293669084_From_Prejudice_to_Prestige_Vocational_Education_and_Training_in_Ghana

Africa. Development of 21st century skills for innovation and enterprise: exploring the role of informal learning environments in the development of skills and aptitudes for the digital creative media industries

This report considers the 21st century skills needed to build a knowledge society and focuses on education and skills development for innovation and entrepreneurship. It covers: digital creative media (DCM) industries in Africa; skills required for DCM industries; skills gaps in African DCM industries; DCM skills required for employability; challenges faced in the development of DCM skills; the role of innovation hubs in developing DCM skills; innovation hubs in Eastern and Southern African countries; innovation hubs and the digital creative media industry; views on approaches to developing skills for the DCM sector; and learning models used in innovation hubs.
http://gesci.org/fileadmin/user_upload/2_Youth_Skills_Enterprise_Files/AKE_research_-_21C_Skills_Full_Report_-_2012_.pdf

Africa. The Financing of Vocational Training in Africa – Roles and Specificities of Vocational Training Funds

The study targets three specific objectives:
-Draw up a bibliographical note summarising the major studies conducted over the last ten years on the topic of the financing of vocational training;
-Propose a typology/ reading grid of vocational training funds;
-According to the typology/reading grid, make recommendations as to the different possible types of support.
http://www.adeanet.org/sites/default/files/afd-financing-vocational-training-africa.pdf

Malawi. Human resource development for poverty reduction: strategies for the informal sector

African countries are dependent on their informal sector and have much of their output and employment figures emanating from this sector. This paper adopted Malawi as a case study in human resource development for poverty reduction with an aim of getting a best plausible strategy in reducing poverty in Africa. Using the data set of informal sector programs in Malawi, the study recommended a family enrichment model as the best in getting these women out of poverty which will overall translate to getting Africa out of poverty.
http://www.unevoc.unesco.org/e-forum/STRATEGIES%20FOR%20INFORMAL%20SECTOR%20HUMAN%20RESOURCE%20DEVELOPMENT%20FOR%20POVERTY%20REDUCTION.pdf

Towards a New Global World of Skills Development?

Articles on skills development.
http://www.norrag.org/en/publications/norrag-news/online-version/towards-a-new-global-world-of-skills-development-tvets-turn-to-make-its-mark.html

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