On the one side, SMEs face difficulties finding the skilled employees they need to be competitive in their trade.
Technical and vocational education and training play a critical role in economic growth, helping to develop skills required to improve the productivity of industries, raise income levels for citizens and improve access to employment opportunities for youth.
To reconnect young populations and SMEs, the Gambian Government has focused on the prime intermediary between them – TVET – by developing this National TVET Road map.
The Gambian TVET system can only support youth employment and SME-competitiveness if it is able to ensure a homogenous quality of training delivery, alignment of courses to employers’ needs and education accessibility in rural regions.
The road map aims to achieve this through coordinated action at the regional and national levels.
The objectives and activities of the road map rely on a detailed diagnosis of the TVET and apprenticeship systems, as well as their supporting policy and regulatory frameworks.
The International Trade Centre (ITC) supported the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (MoHERST) to develop this TVET Road map, as part of the Jobs, Skills and Finance (JSF) for Women and Youth in the Gambia project, managed by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).
The TVET Road map serves as a guiding compass for the Government to equip young people with relevant skills so they can seize existing economic opportunities.
The initiative, which directly supports the country’s National Development Plan to empower youth, focuses on strengthening the policy and coordination of TVET, improving training quality and learning resources, improving the accessibility and perception of TVET and reinforcing labour market monitoring.
It also builds on the existing apprenticeship framework and leverages it to cover “the last mile” in technical education through formalization and quality assurance.
Apprenticeships are being widely delivered across many sectors of The Gambia’s economy.
They are recognised as an important means for young people to develop the skills required to pursue a career in a particular trade or profession and many apprentices appear to use their apprenticeship as a springboard to become self-employed on completion of their apprenticeship, although some apprentices do appear to stay with their master craft persons.
A master craft person is approached by a potential apprentice or their parent to provide training and development in the workplace and the master craft person then provides unpaid on-the-job training.
An apprenticeship varies in length and is at the discretion of the master craft person within a particular trade or sector.
