Youth in the Horn of Africa set to benefit from BEAR UNESCO skills training programme

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NAIROBI, Kenya - Youth from Somalia, South Sudan and the entire part of the Horn of Africa are set to benefit from a new UNESCO training program.

This was revealed by Prof. Hubert Gijzen, UNESCO -Regional Director during a recent workshop of the Better Education for Africa’s Rise II (BEAR II) closure forum.

“As UNESCO we are developing the "Green Skills for Green Jobs" Priority Programme that UNESCO is developing, which will benefit the Eastern Africa countries, including Somalia and South Sudan Somalia from technical skills, especially with our new greening of TVET strategy that will be launched in 2023.”

Prof Gijzen further added that the BEAR partnership has also focused on digitisation, environmental technologies and on solar photovoltaic.

“These are the technologies of today for a better tomorrow. These are the skills needed for Africa’s green transformation. Africa needs to accelerate its green and digital transformation. But for this to happen, we need to prioritise building the green and digital capacities and skills.” comments Prof Gijzen.

BEAR II is a joint initiative of UNESCO and the Republic of Korea, implemented over five years from 2017 to 2022.

The project was implemented in five Eastern African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, the United Republic of Tanzania and Uganda, in improving the relevance, quality and perception of their TVET systems.

Prof Gijzen, “BEAR III programme will commence from next year and will include additional countries, especially from West Africa where we intend to work with our partners to skill the youth with job-market skills, especially in digital areas.”

UNESCO launched a new TVET Strategy, which aims to generate global momentum in support of TVET, contributing to the post-COVID-19 socio-economic recovery and to an acceleration of progress towards the SDGs.

At the regional level, the Visionary AU Agenda 2063 calls for Africa “to catalyze a skills revolution”.

The BEAR project builds on the national development plans of participating countries, and TVET is among the top priorities for all countries in the Region.

The global objective of BEAR II is to give young people in the five beneficiary Eastern African countries a better chance to access decent employment and/or generate self-employment as well as improve the socio-economic growth of the project countries.

The UNESCO project contributes to global efforts to implement the Education 2030 Agenda, the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (2016-2025), the Transforming Education Summit’s Call for Action and the former UNESCO Strategy for TVET (2016–2021) and UNESCO Strategy for TVET (2022-2029).

BEAR II builds on national and regional development plans and priorities of each participating country and aims to improve national TVET systems by focusing on three key areas making TVET more relevant to the needs of the economy and labour market; enhancing the quality of TVET programmes and institutions and improving the perception of TVET among young people, enterprises and society.

GAROWE ONLINE

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