On Thursday, March 4th 2010, Mr. Albert Nsengiyumva, the General Director of the Rwandan Workforce Development Authority (WDA), presented Rwanda's new concept for technical and vocational education ond training (TVET) in front of representatives of the partnership Rwanda / Rhineland-Palatinate in Mayence. The event, that was hosted by the partnership's head orginasation in the rooms of the Ministry of internal affairs, was also attended by the Rwandan ambassador in Berlin, Mrs. Christine Nkulikiyinka. Mr. Nsengiyumva explained, the most important goal of his organisation is to master the transformation of Rwanda from an economy that mainly depends on subsitency towards an industry- and service driven economy, which in turn is part of Vision 2020. The key to reach this goal will be to adjust the vocational education as well as the university education to the demands of the private sector. Thus, he would like representatives of the private sector to assist the WDA working out the curricula for the different disciplines. Another key to make Vision 2020 a success will be to promote entreprenourship among young people.
As one of the main concepts of its work, the WDA will run five so called Integrated Polytechnic Regional Centres (IPRC), one in Kigali and one each in the other four regions - those in Kigali and in the southern region allready exist. The main purpose of these centres will be to train instructors wich in turn will take care of the vocational training in their region. Mr. Nsengiyumva named a coulple of disciplines the WDA will put a priority on, incuding tourism, construction and ICT (information and communication technology). The steps that tha WDA will undertake during the comming three years will be to work out the curricula and a certifiyate system and to train theirinstructors. As vocational education these days takes place in an informal sector
in large scale, its transformation and integration into the now developed formal vocational education will be another task.
Mr. Nsengiyumva also mentioned a couple of problems his organisation will have to deal with. First of all, vocational education still has a bad esteem compared to university education, some sort of second best choice. Thus, the WDA will have to promote vocational education and explain the people the importance
of well educated workers for the development of the country. Secondly, the industrial basis in Rwanda is still weak, so the enhanced vocational education will only bear fruits with an enhanced entrepreneurship. And last but not least, he sees financial problems arising, as the TVET programme is allready underfunded with a budget of about 8 Mio Euro, while 18 Mio Euro would be necessary. This calculation includes a financial participation of the private sector as well as fees, which the students will have to pay for their education.