Dubbed the Better Education for Africa's Rise (BEAR III), the proposed project which will be implemented concurrently in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire will be the third phase of this joint initiative between UNESCO and the government of Korea.

The first phase was implemented in Southern Africa, and the second phase was implemented in Eastern Africa.

Leveraging the lessons learnt from the first two phases, BEAR III seeks to improve the relevance, quality of TVET, and the perception of TVET among young people and society.

As part of the implementation process, the team, led by the Head of Education Section of UNESCO Ghana Office, Prosper Kwasi Nyavor, recently embarked on a week-long engagement with stakeholders in the TVET ecosystem from both the private and public sectors.

They also engaged the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ghana Employers Association (GEA), and other relevant institutions that understand the current labour needs of the real sectors of the Ghanaian economy.

Relevant need

Interacting with the stakeholders, Mr Nyavor said the objective of the project was to make TVET more relevant to the needs of the economy and labour market, enhance the quality of programmes and institutions and also to improve the perception of TVET among young people, enterprises and society.

He said TVET was a cross cutting venture which held almost every part of the economy together and for better implementation of the BEAR III project, it was important that the organisation engaged all stakeholders and partners in the TVET ecosystem for a successful project implementation.

He added that the week-long engagement was to help the team gain a good understanding of the different perspectives from the stakeholders and to know which specific areas the project could concentrate on and add value to the government's TVET transformation agenda.

"The mission was to understand what the government had done so far with regard to TVET and to know where the gaps were so we could put measures in place and contribute to the success of TVET education and also to add value to government's effort," he said.

Economic transformation

The United Nations Resident Coordinator in Ghana, Charles Abani said TVET had the potential of contributing to an inclusive economic transformation, which was one of the outcome areas of the new United Nations (UN) Cooperation Framework for Ghana between the period of 2023 and 2025.

He indicated that the agriculture value chain had enormous job creation potential if the right level of investment was made in that area.

The UN Resident Coordinator added that the government was really committed to building TVET and STEM education in the country because that was what was at the core of building a self-reliant country.

Mr Abani advised the UNESCO team that in formulating the draft project document towards implementation of the BEAR III project, it was important for them to consider that the project was climate resilient.

That, he said, was making sure the project did not in any way damage the climate of the country.

Practical training

Giving a brief analysis of the four-day visit, the Programme Specialist at the Section of Youth, Literacy and Skills Development at UNESCO Headquarters, Hiromichi Katayama, suggested that government enhance teacher and competency training by employing teachers who had and taught practical and industry-based learning rather than theory.

He urged the government to invest in training teachers specifically for the teaching of TVET and also focus more on agriculture as it had many facets in which technical skills could be implemented.