Agriculture curriculum needs to be updated

Agricultural stakeholders at an inception workshop in Accra discussed strategies to improve the capacity of Agricultural Technical Vocational Education and Training (ATVET) institutions to attract the youth to the sector.

They noted that the few vocational and skills training centres such as Kwadaso Agric College, Adidome, Asuansi, Wenchi farm institutes and Kumasi Institute of Tropical Agriculture (KITA), are poorly managed and therefore a total restructuring and update of the curriculum needs to be encouraged to meet the demands of the society.

Addressing the participants including best farmer award winners and agriculture industry players Mr Ernest Patrick Mallet, ATVET Project Coordinator, said the oil and gas industry has taken focus away from agriculture and expressed the hope that ATVET programme would help to reverse the situation.

“If ATVET is not taken seriously, agriculture is going to die out and it is for this reason that we are working with training institutions to develop a curricula to train agriculturists as professionals”, he said.

Mr Mallet said it is important to develop and implement market oriented qualification measures and coherent concepts for the inclusion of agricultural technical vocational education and training components into the national educational systems.

He added that ATVET institutional development would impinge on the review of current curricula to make them more responsive to current trends and industry demands.

Dr Baffour-Awuah, Agricultural Scientist and ATVET Consultant, said ATVET would work with other players in the industry by training providers and agricultural practitioners on skills and competencies needed to meet the benchmarks in the agricultural sector.