Many Ugandan employers complain that the Ugandan workforce faces a dramatic lack of skills. Large segments of the population, including those in the informal sector of the economy, youth and women, do not have the skills they need to work in a productive environment or to generate income.

The Ugandan system for Business, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (BTVET) needs to be reformed.  Many technical and vocational institutions are struggling to deliver quality skills training, training infrastructure is often outdated and the sector faces severe image problems.

That is why Belgium decided to support ‘Skilling Uganda’, a national strategy aimed at improving business, technical and vocational education and training, through a five-year program (2015-2020) that is jointly implemented by BTC and the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Sports (MoESTS). The Belgian contribution to the intervention totals 16 million euro, the Ugandan support is estimated at 10% of this amount.

FIRST STEP: GETTING ALL STAKEHOLDERS TOGETHER
To kick-start the Belgian-Ugandan intervention, a working session was organized early December in Kampala, bringing together different BTVET stakeholders, including private sector partners, government officials and partners from BTVET institutions in Western Uganda. The aim of the meeting was to explain the program’s objectives, collect immediate feedback from the different stakeholders and to introduce the way-forward plan. An important first step, because the ambitious objectives can only be reached if all different stakeholders work together.