Ethiopia, in collaboration with development partners, has been working diligently to capacitate its human capital in various ways to produce more productive citizens, create job opportunities thereby close the skill gaps witnessed in various sectors.
Currently, in collaboration with the government of the Netherlands, it is striving to produce well educated, skilled workforce (particularly in the dairy and horticulture) and create job opportunities for prospective graduates.
Enyew Getnet, Federal TVET Institute Deputy Director-General, said that the project is a joint scheme, carried out at a total capital of 2.7 million Euro. The goal is to equip students and prospective graduates with adequate vocational, soft, digital and entrepreneurial skills and to prepare them for jobs in adding values to the diary and horticulture sector .
The project works to capacitate several agricultural colleges namely: Bako, Kombolcha, Alage, Wolayita Sodo and Woreta TVET colleges in producing manpower that is capable and skillful in supporting farmers, both in the urban and hinterlands, and thereby helps to ensure food security.
As to him, the project concentrates on both the dairy and horticulture sub-sector as both are produced in abundance but not utilized to the level of it should have been. The efforts could change the scenario in easing the job creations and training system of nation.
It operates based on the fundamental notion of improving the quality and employability of agricultural TVET graduates necessitates changes on local, regional and federal levels through triple helix partnerships – among university-industry-government.
Thijs Woudstra, Deputy Ambassador of the Netherlands Embassy in Ethiopia on his part said that the project is instrumental to create jobs and capable graduates. And his Government is committed to support projects worth of 150 million Euros in the agriculture, health, and private sector development.
The Netherlands is the major and the largest investor in Ethiopia’s flower farm sector, with 300 million USD worth of cut flowers exported to the Netherlands. “And we are working to further strengthen it in the future,” he said .
As to him, the Netherlands also supports Ethiopia’s Agricultural Vocational Education sector through projects like Bright Future in Agriculture (BFA), where the aim is to provide hands-on education and supply qualified graduates to the sector.
The project is underway in collaboration with Arba Minch University and is implemented in 12 TVET centers in Ethiopia.
Solomon Mogus, (PhD), Senior Project Consultant also said that Ethiopia has a large livestock population, a relatively favorable climate for improved, high yielding dairy cattle breeds and regions with less animal disease-stress that make the country to have a substantial potential for dairy development.
Considering such potential, investing in development interventions to the dairy sector will contribute to poverty alleviation in the country by increasing the income of smallholder dairy producers and creating employment and transforming the existing largely subsistent type of milk production to commercial level.
Equally, the climatic and soil conditions of the country allow cultivation of a wide range of horticultural crops for domestic and export markets such as Djibouti, Somalia and the Middle East, the Netherlands Germany, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Belgium, UAE, France, Japan Italy, and the United States, among others.
To change nation’s blessings to real returns, capacitating the graduates with fundamentals skills is a potential game changer move that could let nation ensure food security and create jobs.
The Ethiopian Herald January 29/2020
BY MENGISTEAB TESHOME
