First NICHE projects in Egypt to start soon
20 Sep 2011
In Egypt, NICHE focuses on the core problem of the post-secondary education sector: the gap between current employees and graduates, and labour market needs. In this article we look at the first NICHE projects that are being launched in Egypt.
Generally, Egyptian education is very theoretical and out-of-date in terms of contents. The water sector and agriculture sector, however, urgently need employees who are directly usable and meet the latest requirements in terms of technology and international trade.
NICHE will help post-secondary training institutes in Egypt bridge the gap with the labour market. Every project also has a strong gender component aiming to offer men and women equal opportunities. One project specifically focuses on strengthening gender knowledge and using that knowledge in education and policymaking.
Three NICHE projects to start in October
The first NICHE project aims to strengthen the regional training centre for river transport, which is part of the River Transport Authority (RTA). It will be officially launched during the Dutch-Egyptian trade week from 23-27 October 2011.
River transport will play an increasingly important role in Egypt. On the one hand, it will relieve the roads and environment. On the other, it will support Egypt's growing economy and trade.
Both the quantity and quality of the people who work in this sector need to be adjusted to modern regulations and technologies. The project will work hard on integrating a gender perspective, which will be quite a challenge, considering that technical sectors have been traditionally male-dominated.
Public water sector
A second project will focus on a training institute for the public water sector. The Egyptian Ministry of Water and Irrigation is currently going through a change process partly caused by a reduction of Nile water, due to increasing demand.
Instead of making technical water allocations, ministerial staff now has to make political choices and adopt new techniques to save water. However, ministerial staff are relatively old and a hiring freeze means that it is not possible to take young engineers on board. So staff training is the only option.
Agriculture in the desert
The third project focuses on offering practice-oriented training on agriculture in desert areas. Although agriculture is developing, the training offer is too theoretical and economic growth in the sector is threatened by the lack of a well-trained practical workforce.
This summer we launched three other NICHE Calls for tenders for:
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a project in the drinking water and wastewater sector;
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a project on strengthening Farmer Field Schools;
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a gender project at Cairo University.
The evaluation of the bids that have been submitted for the first two projects has now been completed and they are expected to start before the end of the year. The bidding deadline for the third project is on 18 October, but this project should also kick off before the end of the year.
A wide range of Dutch consortia
Many Dutch organisations have shown an interest in our NICHE projects in Egypt and it looks as if the projects will be implemented by a wide range of Dutch consortia.
