Vocational Education and Training (VET) Toolbox is a partnership of leading European development agencies, including British Council (UK), Enabel (Belgium), Expertise France (France), GIZ (Germany), LuxDev (Luxembourg) and AFD (France). The project is co-funded by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
VET Toolbox aims to support partner countries in the design of national VET and employment strategies, and at strengthening their VET service delivery systems.
The current VET Toolbox programme began in September 2020 and is focussed on enhancing the delivery of demand-driven skills development and VET to cater for investment needs in 11 selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the British Council delivering the programme in Ghana and Malawi.
In Malawi, the Enhancing Commercial Farming in the Shire Valley project focusses on supporting skills development in the agriculture sector. By working alongside the Shire Valley Transformation Programme (SVTP), it aims to establish and pilot a framework for developing skilled human resources to support agricultural commercialisation. It will establish a dialogue mechanism between employers and training providers and use this to inform the development of needs-based, practical training on an ongoing basis. Other partners include the Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Agriculture, the TEVET Authority, and the Smallholder-Owned Commercial Farming Enterprises (SOCFEs) being supported by the SVTP. The project will be delivered in the Chikwawa and Nsanje Districts of Southern Malawi.
The project aims to provide practical training in tractor mechanisation to 400 people and of this number, the aim is for 280 of them to find decent jobs and for the remaining 120 to receive support to go into entrepreneurship. The project is developing short courses in Operation and Maintenance of Irrigation Infrastructure and Farm Machinery
The VET Toolbox programme in Malawi is scheduled to run until December 2024. For more information, please see the VET Toolbox website and the VET Toolbox brochure.