Entrepreneurship development in Vocational Education and Training

Sector

Private sector development

Project budget

The maximum budget for this project is € 1.4 million.

Organisations

This project has been jointly developed by the Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA) and Morogoro Vocational Teacher Training College (MVTTC). The tender for this project expired on 8 March 2010.

Nuffic has awarded this tender to Triodos Facet, which has formed a consortium with CINOP and Maastricht School of Management (MSM).

Project description

This NICHE project aims to improve the employability of VET graduates and semiskilled craftspersons by improving the capacity of the VET system. This will improve the competitiveness of the private sector and create more jobs with a gender focus.

In order to achieve this overall objective, VETA and MVTTC need to be strengthened to enable them to guide and support the VET system to deliver Competence Based Education and Training (CBET) that is labour market oriented and gender sensitive.

About VETA and MVTTC

VETA is an autonomous Government Agency responsible for VET development in Tanzania. It is currently running 21 training centres and one Vocational Teachers Training college (VTTC). VTTC coordinates a total of 147 government-owned centres, 337 privately-owned centres, 270 centres owned by faith-based organisations and 163 centres owned by NGOs.

Morogoro Vocational Teacher Training College (MVTTC) is the resource centre for human resource development in VET. It focuses on strengthening vocational teachers, management and entrepreneurial skills training.

Present status

Tanzania's youth population is rapidly growing and makes up more than 30% of the total population and 68% of the national labour force. At the same time the unemployment rate among youths is alarming, especially in the urban areas.

Dar es Salaam has the highest rate at 55%, against 41.4% in other urban areas and 8.6% in rural areas.

Private sector development depends on appropriately skilled, creative, innovative, motivated and highly dynamic and gender sensitive workforce. The poor performance of the private sector is attributed to the lack of the abovementioned characteristics.

Employers complain about an inadequate commitment to quality, integrity, innovation, readiness to learn and proactiveness.

The main cause of the problem is the inadequate entrepreneurial capacity of VET institutions to proactively respond to labour market needs. This is attributed to the inappropriate human resource capacities in terms of entrepreneurial attitudes and value. The problem affects the entire economic sector.