Practising what you preach, preaching what you practice:World Bank support for technical and vocational education and training in sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

This is the second of two articles on World Bank support for technical and vocational education and training in sub-Saharan Africa. The first article reviewed the World Bank’s latest policy document on TVET in SSA. This article takes a broader historical perspective by examining the evolution of World Bank policy and practice in this key area of education provision during the last 30 years. The Bank took the lead during the early 1990s in actively promoting a comprehensive reform strategy for TVET in SSA which sought to reduce the role of the state in direct training provision and to make training systems more demand-driven. The serious implementation shortcomings of this strategy eventually led to the emergence of a new approach to skills development in SSA in the late 2000s which places considerably more emphasis on the centrality of skills development for national development.

KEYWORDS:

• technical and vocational education and training
• World Bank
• sub-Saharan Africa
• policy and practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The core feature of neo-liberal ideology is the reliance on markets as the main driving force shaping the overall functioning and development of capitalist economies. The main policies associated with neo-liberal economic reform are deregulation of product and factor markets, free trade, and privatisation.

2. A recent ‘literature review’ of TVET in African development highlights just how limited academic research in this area has been during recent decades (see McGrath et al. 2020). The considerable amount of research that has been conducted on TVET and skills development in South Africa is the key exception.

3. In Cote d’Ivoire ($17 million), Ghana ($10 million), Kenya ($22 million), Madagascar ($23 million), Mauritania ($13 million), Mauritius ($5 million) and Togo ($9 million). Budget information on the remaining two, single focus TVET projects in Benin and Mali is not available on the World Bank data website.

4. Tanzania is the most extreme case where it was expected that all levy income would be allocated to the new national training authority (VETA) but where this has progressively declined to only one-third.

5. Nearly all the Bank project completion reports for these projects emphasise this as a key issue.

6. See Filmer and Fox (2014), Adams, Johannson de Silva, and Razmarra 2007); Adams, Johannson de Silva, and Razmarra (2013).

7. In many ways, therefore, the Bank itself has become more demand/client-driven.

8. It would appear, however, that the Bank does not have a clearly elaborated capacity building strategy.