Team Europe Initiative Opportunity-driven Skills and VET

The initiative is a key element under the EU-Africa Global Gateway Investment Package announced at the 2022 EU Africa-Summit. It supports skills needed in sectors that are part of the package (digital, climate and energy, health, transport, education and research). The African Union Continental Strategy for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) to Foster Youth Employment also stresses the importance of a paradigm shift from focusing on supply-driven formal VET to a demand-driven more holistic VET policy approach.

Partners of the TEI will interact with multiple stakeholders at regional/international level:

• Private sector/business networks in Africa and the EU – in selected value chains and sectors.
• Authorities with a continental or regional mandate. At country level there will be direct interaction with public and private sector partners in the context of the Commission’s and Member States’ country programmes.

The overall objective of the project is to ensure that VET provisions in Sub-Saharan Africa are responsive to concrete and decent job opportunities created by investment, trade and other market dynamics in selected sectors and value chains.

How can we achieve it?

1. By identifying employment opportunities and related skills profiles
2. By providing advisory services for VET provision responsive to identified opportunities and profiles
3. By fully engaging the private sector in this process and stimulating opportunity-driven Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) for VET including the mobilization of forthcoming Erasmus+ partnerships

The initiative will support more than 40 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa who have identified VET and skills development as significant activities under the priority areas addressing the green and digital transitions, sustainable growth and decent job creation, strengthening of health systems or as dedicated priority areas in their EU multi-annual indicative programmes or as envisaged by Member States implementation in national TEIs.

The initiative consists of three building blocks:

1. Technical Assistance facility providing support based on requests from EU Delegations, EU Member States or private sector organisations to identify employment opportunities and required skills needs around flagship initiatives and translate findings in targeted recommendations for VET system support responsive to identified employment opportunities;
2. Regional exchange on Public-Private-Partnerships to promote opportunity-driven VET and skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa, and to create a space for practical exchange between public and private stakeholders on active partnerships. This includes a linkage to relevant Erasmus+ financed actions on capacity building for PPP in VET to strengthen EU Africa engagement on skills;
3. Competitive Funding mechanism to finance regional and multi-country VET initiatives in support of (regional) value chains that complement country multi-annual indicative programmes, as well as actions that more generally support this paradigm shift of reverse engineering VET in function of employment opportunities market dynamics create.

The TEI will be implemented in cooperation with other regional and national TEIs, providing support services in relevant areas, such as:

• TEIs providing support to the ecosystem for entrepreneurial development;
• Sector specific TEIs which have identified skills as a relevant support service.

A mapping of relevant business networks in Africa that need to be engaged in an opportunity-driven VET approach is being initiated. The first case studies have been launched at country level for the textile & apparel sector in Ghana, the agri-food sector in Senegal, and at regional level the pharma industry with MAV+ project.