Projects

The ACE II project was conceived in response to multiple and well-formulated project proposals from individual countries and universities for establishing regional education and research centers in specific topics. This larger systematic regional project is meant to strengthen longer-term African capacity to train at the highest level a new generation of Africans who can develop and apply science and technology to solve Africa’s most pressing challenges. Given the shared nature of these challenges such as energy shortage, high infant mortality, low agriculture productivity and high food imports, the challenge of adding value to primary commodities in Africa, for example, the investments and the capacity from this project should benefit the region and not be limited by national borders.

According to the 2015 World Bank Enterprise Surveys, over 25 percent of the formal firms surveyed in Sub-Saharan Africa identify an inadequately educated workforce as a major constraint, and over 29 percent of all production workers are rated unskilled workers by these firms. Shortage of specialized technical and vocational education and training (TVET) skills is particularly acute in transport, energy, manufacturing, including agro-processing, and ICT, and this could slow the industrialization agenda. A careful mapping of skills needs assessment for the East Africa Skills for Transformation and Regional Integration Project (EASTRIP) sectors provides concrete statistics that show severe skills shortage. Moreover, TVET institutions have no systematic approaches to engage industry to understand and translate market demands into curricula.