• Government will be aggressive on its aim of creating opportunities for youths to be trained.
• Individuals do not need formal education qualification to acquire skills development competence.
• TEVETA’s 2022 strategy will be focused on tools and equipment reinforcement.

Ministry of Technology and Science says it will spend K13 million in 2022 on competence training targeting young people in line with the Ministry’s clear skills development strategy.
Speaking to journalists, Minister in charge Felix Mutati said the training will include people without formal education, provided they have the ability to be trained.
Mr. Mutati stated that beginning next year, government will be aggressive on its aim of creating opportunities for youths to be trained, employed and become entrepreneurs.
He added that his Ministry realizes that individuals do not need formal education qualification to acquire skills development competence, therefore creating a training program with duration of one year targeting this group of Zambians, while those with formal with formal education will be on a three (3) year program.
Mr. Mutati further said the base towards achieving all this will be for government through his ministry push in resources, infrastructure developments and equipment in all the technical training colleges in order for the young people especially, to have the opportunities.
“Our absolute aim is that, how can we create opportunities for the youths to be trained, get employed or better still become entrepreneurs. We are going to be very aggressive on this particular front” Mr. Mutati said.
And Mutati stated that the Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training Authority (TEVETA)’s 2022 strategy will be focused on tools and equipment reinforcement across all training institutes.
He said TEVETA is government’s anchor for skills development and therefore, his ministry further intends to re-examine the curriculum to be able to train students that are industry ready.
‘The ministry also intends to look into the infrastructure that has stalled and complete it in order to increase the capacity to train the students.”
Mr. Mutati explained that all this will require significant financing which has been sourced from cooperating partners who are keen to support skills development as supplementary funding apart from the national budget allocation of over K200 million under the skills development fund.
He said, “the Japanese government has already pledged $4.6 million to assist in training platforms which houses heavy mining equipment for youths to find opportunities in the mining sector and there is further support from the African Development Bank, with the Ministry’s estimates for next year being a minimum of $3 million to supplement the 2022 national budget allocation.”