Sierra Leone’s Minister of Finance, Jacob Jusu-Saffa, has on Thursday June 11, 2020, launched the Sierra Leone Skills Development Project (SLSDP) in the conference hall of the Ministry of Information and Communications in Freetown.
Minister Saffa described the project as the “bread and butter” for the youths.
According to Finance Ministers several skill gap assessments that have been conducted suggest that the workforce in Sierra Leone lacks both foundational and technical skills. He attributed lack of skills among the youth to high cost of training, which said was prohibitive, especially for most domestic enterprises. He said that the SLSDP, is a solution to the lack of skills among the youth, and added that the Project had been modeled to support the Government’s aim of developing the capacity of Sierra Leoneans by skills advancement and facilitating the establishment of a Skills Development Fund. “The project is an initiative that will support the country’s capacity to increase labour productivity, ” the Minister said.
The objective of the Sierra Leone Skills Development Project (SLSDP) and thus the Skills Development Fund (SDF) is `to develop a demand-led skill development system to support Sierra Leone’s Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy’.
The Finance Minister said youth are mobilized more during campaigns by politicians, but “unfortunately we forget them when elections are won.”
He recalled that they started analyzing the type of unemployment among the youths in Sierra Leone during a campaign rally somewhere in southern Sierra Leone, when Bio had asked him about what they could do for the youth.
“We looked at graduate unemployment, those who leave university but could not find jobs largely because of the curriculum… a curricular that does not match with the existing job market. You have those who cannot read and engaged in farming; and you have the early school leavers who are often left in the cold. They all want jobs but unfortunately, they cannot have the jobs because they lack the skills demanded by the labour market. So if you have to address the issue of unemployment, it is imperative that you develop the skills; without it, you would be wasting time,” the Minister averred.
Saffa said that skills training could help youth to either be self-employed or work for other institutions and attain a reliable means of survival. “If you have to provide bread and butter for the people ,you have to provide them the necessary skills,” he emphasized.
The Finance Minister further expressed his awareness that President Bio, the head of the current administration, promised in his manifesto among other things, the establishment of technical institutes at district levels. “We are very much advance in that, and we are going to do it,” he assured.
World Bank Sierra Leone Operations Officer, Abu Kargbo, expressed the Bank’s admiration for the Government of Sierra Leone for making skills development a priority in the medium-term national development agenda under two main clusters – the human capital development cluster and the diversify economy and political cluster.
He explained that the project was mainly funded by a US$20million loan provided by the World Bank with a counterpart funding of US$2 million from the Government of Sierra Leone amounting to US$22 million.
The project has two components: a US$19 million Skills Development Fund (SDF) component; and a US$3 million Capacity Building and System Strengthening component.
He commented that the need for skills development in Sierra Leone can’t be overemphasized, saying, “We all know that the country’s rapidly increasing population along with GDP demographics and heightened levels of poverty required government’s deliberate efforts to improve the overall wellbeing of citizens of this country, and one way to do it is to improve the labour force in Sierra Leone.”
NCTVA Director, Alhaji Jalloh, said that education is the key to development, adding that skill training is the master key. He also emphasized that the project offers demand-led skills in key sectors of the economy, and also spoke about competency-based educational training, which meant that they would be testing competence to produce rather than to explain.
Acting Minister of Labour, Lansana Mohamed Dumbuya, during a routine visit to the industries in Sierra Leone said: “we have found out that lots of positions which should be acquired by Sierra Leoneans are not occupied by Sierra Leoneans. We are always challenged when we visit these institutions. This is because we don’t have the required skills. This project is important because at the end of the day the skills gap we have in the country would be filled.”
The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Technical and Higher Education, Gilbert Cooper, explained that the TVET policy was born out of the desire to address critical challenges identified in the rapid diagnostic studies undertaken by the Ministry of Higher Education in May 2018. Copper further said that the recommendations of that study triggered the TVET policy he described as relevant flexible, effective, efficient, accessible and sustainable.
Minister of Technical and Higher Education, Professor Aiah Gbakima, said that it is extremely important that the project was tailored give the youth an opportunity to do something with their lives.
By Ibrahim S. Bangura
15/6/2020. ISSUE NO.: 7845