The Ministry of Education (MOE) through the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the GIZ Ghana, to offer young people relevant employable professional skills.

The MoU was signed under the continuous cooperation within the Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Component of the Programme for Sustainable Economic Development (PSED) which implements the Ghana Skills Development Initiative (GSDI IV).

Signed on August 31, 2020, the MoU extended the partnership between the two organisations to September 30, 2022, a statement signed by Mr David Kweku Babayara, the Communications Officer, PSED/TVET Project, and copied to the Ghana News Agency explained.

Dr. Fred Asamoah, the Executive Director of COTVET and Mr Detlev Jahn Axel, the Head of Programme for the PSED at GIZ Ghana, signed on behalf of their respective organisations.

The major thrust of the MoU, it said, was to promote a mutually beneficial cooperation between the two organisations during the implementation of the fourth phase of the Ghana Skills Development Initiative (GSDI IV).

The GSDI IV is a project co-funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and implemented in partnership with COTVET.

Dr. Asamoah, during the signing ceremony said: “In as much as we need to set some standards to guide our collaboration and relationship going forward, we can always be flexible to make sure that this MOU is implemented successfully, depending on the situation at every point in time.”

GSDI IV started in October 2019 and is expected to be completed by September 2022 with the aim of producing high-quality, standardized TVET to improve professional skills that meet the needs of the labour market to promote the greater employability of young people in Ghana.

The project, the statement said, supported COTVET’s innovative approach to introducing Competency-Based Training (CBT) standards by focusing more on a certain shift of interventions from the micro to the meso level.

This is with a stronger support on anchoring processes for the collaborative, competency-based training model within the Ghanaian public institutions, the TVET system and the private sector.

Direct beneficiaries of GSDI IV Project include job-seeking youth, apprentices, workers and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise owners in the formal and informal sectors.

GSDI IV, the statement said, would also motivate women to participate in trainings in TVET occupational fields that are predominantly dominated by men and vice-versa.

The Ghana Skills Development Initiative (GSDI) is a project commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in cooperation with COTVET and other public and private sector stakeholders.

In Ghana, approximately 85 per cent of the economically active population work in the informal sector and the traditional training of apprentices makes up for about 80 to 90 per cent of the overall technical and vocational education and training (TVET), the statement said.

The major areas of support for GSDI IV include development of a system for the certification of master instructors and the piloting of a recognition of prior learning (RPL) system.

It also embraces a stronger focus on capacity development for COTVET in the areas of TVET coordination, registration and accreditation, curriculum development, and quality assurance.

Others are the support in conducting campaigns to improve the image of vocational education and empowering women in future-oriented careers and the support to COTVETs organisational and institutional development in Accra and in planned regional offices.