Senegal’s Programme Contributing to Vocational Education Reform is Endorsed

For this, a workshop was held late August 2016 in Dakar, enabling the determination of the PROCOR structure, coupling sectors with a geographic area, thus prioritizing three of the country’s economic sectors, and linking them to two territorial poles. Participants then carried out a prioritization of the obstacles identified to select those that could be taken on board by the IIEP-Pôle de Dakar’s support programme through its PEFOP.

Three Territorialized Sector Action Plans (PASET) where thus defined in the context of the Senegal PROCOR: construction in the Cap-Vert territorial pole (the regions of Dakar and Thiès), the tourism sector in the same territorial pole (Dakar and Thiès) and the agro-silvo-pasture sector in the Casamance pole (the regions of Kolda, Sédhiou and Ziguinchor). In order to validate these three action plans, the PEFOP support programme’s coordination team convened the players of the three economic sectors from October 26 to 28, 2016 in Dakar, to review all the actions considered, further define them and adapt them to local contexts. A complementary work session with a dozen tourism stakeholders on November 21, 2016 enabled a review of the respective PASET’s consistency and grounding, by approving the specific activities chosen to lift the obstacles noted in this area.

The professionals involved in this phase of endorsement of the national PROCOR and its three PASETs helped the support team to properly outline the specific concerns of each sector:

• Professionals of the construction sector voiced two proposals: 1) To work with the private sector to operationalize existing financial instruments for vocational training, such as the national state-employer convention. 2) To support the implementation of business-based training with both types of players involved: those involved in steering and those involved in the implementation of training with companies.
• For the tourism sector, two recommendations were noted: 1) To conduct a situational analysis in relation to the chosen axes before implementing the considered actions. 2) To capitalize on the sector’s experiences and sensitize about sharing good practices (those pertaining to apprenticeships and dual training among others) to attain equity and access.
• Finally, for the agro-silvo-pasture sector, professionals formulated three concerns: 1) To conduct a situational analysis of agricultural training arrangements in Casamance, to appraise past experiences and draw conclusions from them. 2) To establish a sector coordination framework and an information system on market needs, and monitor professional integration. 3) To support the finalization and validation of legal and regulatory texts for certification.

A further significant lesson drawn from this validation exercise, was that all the actors involved from the three sectors underlined the strong need to create a national observatory of employment and qualifications, enabling the establishment of a strong link between the needs of the economic environment and the organization of vocational training in Senegal.

The PASETs, thus broadly defined and endorsed at the national level, must now be shared with the stakeholders of each geographic area involved in order to plan the rollout of the chosen actions. For each PASET, an information and sensitization mission will be conducted by PEFOP experts to ensure the broad participation of involved players. After each of these missions, the official launch of the PASET will be organized with the key players involved in each territorial pole.