Dr. Daniel Baffour Awuah, Executive Secretary of the Council for Technical and Vocational Training (COTVET) has noted that for any country to build a sustainable future, youth employment and participation in various events, particularly skills development is paramount.
He indicated that globally, the major issues affecting youth in specific ways included the lack of adequate education and employment, lack of assets and property rights, exposure to risky behaviours, violence and crime and most importantly lack of participation in decision-making.
Dr. Awuah was presenting a paper on the topic, “Building a Sustainable Society through Innovative and Skills Development” at the fifth Annual International Applied Research of the Koforidua Polytechnic on Tuesday.
The main objective of the two-day Conference was to provide a forum for presentation of research output by members of the Polytechnic Community and beyond. It also aimed at stimulating interest in research and publication in the Polytechnics.
Dr. Awauh said in the context of the youth demographic explosion globally, the combination of those factors posed severe threats not only to the medium-long term development of a generation, but for countries as a whole.
“For example, in Africa, over 200 million people are now officially designated as youth aged between 15 and 24 years”.
He indicated that the youth made up 40 per cent of Africa’s working age population, but 60 per cent of the total number of the unemployed.
Dr. Awuah noted that in all, 72 per cent of African youth lived on less than $2 a day, adding that some 133 million young people (more than half of Africa’s youth) were illiterate.
“Many of these young people have few or no skills, which really poses a major challenge towards building a sustainable society”.
Dr. Awuah indicated that policy makers and Politicians had responded to the demand for youth employment by proposing dramatically increased support to Post Basic level education, particularly technical and vocational skills development.
He said the issue of unemployed youth who were unable to take further education and training should be a serious concern to governments at the highest level, as the majority of those youth ended up working in low productive informal jobs.
Dr. Awuah said a major challenge in innovative skills development for any sustainable society was how to set up a system to determine industrial skill requirements on an ongoing basis, and how to translate those requirements into changes in learning materials and training approaches; and to ensure that the system was responsive to change.
He noted that strengthening the link between skill acquisition and skills utilization in most countries also remained a challenge.
“At the individual level, graduates complete pre-employment courses or apprenticeships and find themselves with virtually no formal post-training support”.
Dr. Awuah indicated that technical and vocational skills development had emerged as one of the most effective human resource development strategies that any country needed to embrace in order to train and modernize their workforce for rapid industrialization and national development.
He said one of the most important features of vocational training was its orientation towards the world of work and the emphasis of the curriculum towards the acquisition of employable skills.
“Vocational training can respond not only to the needs of different types of industries, but also to the different training needs of learners from different socio-economic and academic backgrounds, and prepare them for gainful employment and sustainable livelihoods”.
Dr. Awauh said to build a sustainable society in the 21st Century through innovative skills development, apart from the skills sets that trainees would acquire, it was important to ensure that all graduates do possess “21st Century Skills” and also adopt a life-long learning approach.
He mentioned those skills to include reading, writing, computation, Technical and Organizational skills and Company Specific skills.
Professor Reynolds Okai, Rector of the Koforidua Polytechnic, in a welcoming address, noted that the theme for the Conference, “Building a Sustainable Society through Innovation and Skills Development” was both timely and relevant.
This, he said, was due to the fact that there was a greater consciousness today of the world increasingly becoming interdependent, the links and inter-dependence of the two topics- innovation and skills development, could lead to a better understanding and knowledge of socio-economic issues vital for posterity.**
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