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By Agnes Ansah
Accra, Aug.29, GNA – The Association of Technical Universities and Polytechnics in Africa (ATUPA) has commenced its 2023 conference in Accra with a pitching competition from students across the continent.
The competition is to instill the spirit of entrepreneurship in the youth and prepare them to create their own jobs after school.
Students who participated in the pitching competition were drawn from some Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) institutions from Ghana, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
They pitched ideas from energy production to using African traditional wears in making wedding gowns.
The winner will be given a cash prize to implement the pitched idea.
Mr Erastus Mong’are, Executive Director, StartUp Africa, said the competition had become necessary because “youth unemployment in Africa is a time bomb waiting to explode”.
He noted that a lot of young people on the continent were travelling abroad to seek greener pastures and said: “So, instead of waiting to witness the unemployment timebomb explosion, we decided that we want to witness an explosion of innovation and employment, hence the idea of encouraging the youth to innovate.”
Madam Gifty Twum Ampofo, the Deputy Minister for Education in charge of TVET, said: “When you have a young population, you have only two options: you either train them to benefit from the dividends or you leave them alone to become a security threat to the continent.
“So, we want to engage the youth to pursue TVET and acquire relevant skills that will ensure that those who want to be on their own as entrepreneurs, they get it right, and those who want to work in the factories, they get it right, and those who want to remain in academia to train younger people, also get it right.”
She said Ghana was doing quite well with TVET and said currently, all 10 technical universities in the country as well as the 34 National Vocational and Technical Institutes (NVTI) had been well retooled with modern equipment, which had repositioned them to come out with various innovations.
She encouraged the students to focus on building good entrepreneurial skills that would help them to create their own jobs after school.
This year’s ATUPA conference is being hosted in partnership with StartUp Africa, the African Union, China Education Association for International Exchange and the Ministry of Education, Ghana.
It is on the theme: “Mainstreaming Technical and Vocational Education Training TVET for Skills Development, Mobility and Resilient Economies in Africa”.
It is to promote TVET for job creation and economic development in the member countries.
Participants would be required to generate transnational and trans-institutional discussion themes and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) frameworks that not only aim to bring innovative approaches to TVET programming in Africa, but also make effort at harmonising the conception of TVET and its contributions to Africa’s social and economic development goals.
GNA
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