Pushing back the boundaries: a chat with ETF's Stefan Thomas

Although Sub-Saharan Africa may seem a long way from the European Union, it is a region that has begun to feature prominently in the work of the ETF. The socio-economic integration of an increasing youth population – it is projected to reach 413 million in 2050, according to the World Bank – into rapidly changing societies is a huge challenge for African countries, and for their VET systems in particular. One person who knows that challenge well is Stefan Thomas, the ETF's Senior Human Capital Development Expert on work-based learning and vocational excellence.

"The EU channels a lot of money into VET in Sub-Saharan Africa," he explains. "So there is huge demand for advice, both in the EU delegations and the countries themselves. With its specialised expertise, the ETF can definitely play a supporting role"

Experience in Africa

Stefan's career history marks him out for that role. After working in the vocational education and training system in his native Germany for several years, he joined the German development agency GIZ in Ethiopia to support the reform of the country's technical and vocational education and training (TVET) system. After a stint at GIZ headquarters, where he also worked as an advisor to the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, he went to Albania to develop an educational reform project, before refocusing on Sub-Saharan Africa as an international expert in countries such as Malawi, South Sudan and Zimbabwe. 

Regional specificities

That professional experience has left him well versed in the specificities of the region. One big difference compared to Europe is the linguistic diversity: over 80 different languages are spoken in Ethiopia alone. "That complicates things," says Stefan: "English is often chosen as the language of instruction, but the teachers and students are not always adequately prepared for that." 

The size of informal economies is another big issue, resulting in difficulties in reconciling TVET with informal and non-formal learning. The weight of the informal sector creates significant difficulties in implementing measures like apprenticeship programmes, which have proven their effectiveness in terms of employment: because the number of companies in the formal sector is still small, programmes like these are extremely hard to deliver at scale. Financing is another huge problem.

"If you want to provide VET access to 30%, 40% or 50% of an age cohort, it has to be financed," Stefan explains. 

Centres of Vocational Excellence

More recently, Stefan's work at the ETF has focused on Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVE), a model that is generating increasing interest. CoVEs are VET providers that collaborate with economic, educational, social and political partners to spur regional development by creating local skills ecosystems. They are particularly well suited to implementing industry-oriented, high quality VET in line with regional and international standards. With its ETF Network for Excellence (ENE) – a network bringing together 322 CoVEs from 52 countries worldwide – the ETF is one of the model's leading international proponents of the concept.

Facilitating excellence in Rwanda

Today, that expertise is also attracting significant interest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where Stefan has been involved in two projects over the past two years. The first of them was in Rwanda, where the government has decided to establish around 30 CoVEs, using a mixture of  grants (some of them from the EU) and  development loans. "The ETF was asked to support Rwanda's TVET Board by conceptualising what we understand by TVET Centres of Excellence," Stefan explains. "The finished paper has now been published, and provides a common understanding among international donors and government stakeholders."

The project, is a significant one for the East African country. "It's a huge amount of money in the context of their national budget," says Stefan. "They have clear strategies for economic development, they're very ambitious, and they have a very clear idea of the sectors where they want to improve. They want to develop agriculture and food production, IT, become a logistics hub for East Africa, offer top quality tourism and make inroads into the pharmaceutical industry. So it's very important for them to foster an international level of quality in those sectors."

Focus on best practice

The second initiative was an international conference on The Role of Centres of Vocational Excellence in VET in Africa, organised in Casablanca in June 2024 in partnership with Enabel, the Belgian agency for technical cooperation. The conference brought together participants from a dozen Sub-Saharan African countries to discuss the role of CoVEs, showcase good practices, facilitate transnational cooperation and identify areas where further advice is needed.

"The CoVE model is gaining momentum right now, and this is an ideal format to share best practices," Stefan explains. "Many countries are interested in it, and Morocco – an ETF partner country – offers a good example for them. It's a country that has established strong links with Sub-Saharan Africa, and which also has an active CoVE network of its own."

Specifically, the Casablanca conference showcased the ETF's International Self-Assessment Tool for CoVEs (ISATCOVE), a digital platform that enables VET providers to evaluate their activities against international best practice. For countries – like those in Sub-Saharan Africa – which are focused on achieving international levels of quality in certain economic sectors, it provides invaluable feedback in setting goals and identifying what needs to be done. And when it comes to more hands-on advice, the ETF's international ENE network is there to help.

"If a country wants to create a centre of excellence in a specific sector – agriculture, IT, or whatever – we can try to find the experienced partners to help them do it," says Stefan.

So although it might appear to fall outside the organisation's traditional remit, Sub-Saharan Africa is a great example of how the ETF is rising to meet the global TVET challenge.