Economic and political partners from the local as well as the national level gathered on the 21st and 22nd of May at St.-Daniel Comboni in Moroto and Nakapiripirit Technical Institute to admire the institutes’ newly edited business plans.

The Support to Skilling Uganda project (SSU) with financial support from Irish Aid, assists these two partner institutes in Karamoja to become modern, relevant and demand driven Centers of Excellence for a particular trade. While St-Daniel Comboni focuses on Construction, Nakapiripirit TI specializes in Agro-business and Agriculture.

The first step in this process is the development of business plans to guide the institutes in their transformation. Irish Ambassador Findbar O’Brien added that “Development partners, local and central government must work together to offer practical solutions to improve the quality of education, for instance through the involvement of the private sector. ” This idea of public-private-partnerships to strengthen skills development is a guiding principle in the Skilling Uganda strategy. 

Through internal self-assessments and external management coaching, both technical Institutes created their own business plan. They worked out their performance indicators, based on the Skilling Uganda Strategy, to set realistic targets and follow up on their objectives. Commissioner for Economic Policy and Planning , Mr. Fredrick Matyama added that “When the training makes people skilled, it will carry to others. That’s how we will make Business, Technical and Vocational Education (BTVET) more respected.”  SSU Karamoja shall soon start an awareness campaign with such role models to attract Karamojong youth, and especially girls and women, to BTVET.
  
Based on the business plans, SSU shall assist the institutes with infrastructural improvements, management training, relevant equipment and coaching in terms of improving work-based learning practices, assessing market relevance of training programs, training of trainers, career guidance, tracing of graduates, etc. An additional aim is to feed the lessons learned from the implementation of the Skilling Uganda strategy in different regions into the educational reform process on the national level.