Ghana Launches Skills Development Fund to Enhance Technical and Vocational Education

Dr Fred Kyei Asamoah, Director General, Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET), has restated the Government’s commitment to enhancing the TVET sector.
He said TVET was the most effective way of providing people with relevant skills to prepare them for the world of work and also boost their employability as adult workers through skills upgrade and reskilling.
Dr Asamoah said this at the launch of the Ghana Skills Development Fund (GSDF), which is intended to serve as the vehicle for raising TVET finance and for fund disbursement.
The funds are to be accessed by all types of existing micro and small enterprises with high-employment-growth potential, businesses with strong female profiles and Persons Living With Disabilities (PWDs).
Dr Asamoah said the GSDF was part of government’s overall strategy to industrialise Ghana and create jobs and competitiveness of the skilled workforce through the raising of the income-earning capacities of people, especially women and low-income groups, with the provision of quality-oriented, industry-focused, and competency-based training programmes and complementary services.
He emphasised that TVET would play a key role in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, providing lifelong learning opportunities.
Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, Minister for Education, whose speech was read by Madam Gifty Twum-Ampofo, Deputy Minister of Education in Charge of TVET, stated that the launch of the GSDF marked the first step towards government’s agenda to develop a TVET system that had adequate and sustainable funding.
He said the government was allocating an amount of US$60 million out of a loan of USD 200 million from the International Development Association of the World Bank towards the implementation of the GSDF as one of the key components of the Ghana Jobs and Skills project.
He said the GSDF was a challenge fund mechanism, which addressed the skills needs of enterprises operating in both the formal and informal sectors of the economy.
The Minister said the fund was a demand-driven response to two of the most critical challenges encountered by the productive sectors in Ghana -a qualified and skilled labour force and the acquisition and development of technology towards increased productivity and practical innovations.
He said the objective of the fund was to help support the upgrading of the skills of employees within at least 700 enterprises and companies for productivity improvement and to enable employees adopt emerging new technologies.
“We also hope that it will enable current employees to earn higher technical and vocational skills qualifications and incomes. And lead to upgrading the skills of master crafts-persons and self-employed graduate apprentices” he said.
Mr Kwasi Asamoah-Baffour, Chairperson of the Steering Committee of the GSDF, in his remark, said the beneficiary enterprises would be drawn from the formal and informal sectors of the economy, adding that businesses that developed innovations relevant to solving societal challenges had a good opportunity to benefit from the sub-component as well as organisations that sought to advance their technologies and scale up their operations.