Publication: Assessing Swaziland’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training System to Improve Economic Growth
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2014
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2016-10-19
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Swaziland’s economic growth has moderated over the last two decades and has been among the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa. The slow growth has exacerbated the serious challenges facing the country’s development, for example, high unemployment, particularly among the youth. The demographic shift in the coming two decades will cause working age population growth to outpace population growth. At the recent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates, job creation will fail to keep pace with the number of new entrants, most of them are the youth and current job seekers in the labor market. Although skills development is a continuing process and most of it takes place on the job, for young people, foundation skills are developed in education and training institutions. In particular, their basic vocational and technical skills are developed through technical and vocational education and training (TVET). Thus, whether the current TVET system in the country can meet the above mentioned expectations needs to be examined. The rapid assessment provides an overview of a highly varied landscape of TVET providers. At present, Swaziland has 70 TVET institutions, 27 are public, 29 are private for-profit, and 14 are run by NGOs, churches and communities (private but non-profit). These institutions offer 415 training programs in 60 areas ranging from vocational programs such as sewing, farming, carpentry, etc. to highly technical and professional programs such as business management, computer programming, education, etc.The assessment also reveals the fragmentation and lack of coordination of the country’s current TVET system. Some principal weaknesses include : 1) Low efficiency of the system, especially in the public sector; 2) Limited range of programs; 3) Lack of strong quality assurance mechanisms at both national and institutional levels; 4) Insufficient public investment in TVET. From the assessment, it is clear that urgent attention must be given to the weak alignment between current TVET provision and labor market requirements. This is particularly evident in priority industries of tourism, food processing, manufacturing, and mining. This report sheds light on potential areas for policy intervention to improve the TVET system and make it more effective in helping address youth unemployment in the country.
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“World Bank Group. 2014. Assessing Swaziland’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training System to Improve Economic Growth. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25203 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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