Financing Vocational Training in Sub-Saharan Africa

For developing countries, vocational training is a vital component of the drive to enhance productivity, stimulate economic competitiveness, and lift people out of poverty. However, training provision in many countries is underfinanced and fragmented, and traditional state-funded training programs are proving inadequate to the task. Financing Vocational Training in Sub-Saharan Africa emphasizes the central role that financing strategies should play in enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of training systems as a whole, through incentives, greater competition, and the integration of private and public provision. This book describes the emerging consensus about best practice in the financing of training, drawing on experience in Latin America and Asia, and testing this consensus against findings from Sub-Saharan Africa. It sets out the case for financing interventions by governments and scrutinizes the role, and effectiveness, of national training agencies, payroll levies, and alternative transfer mechanisms for institutional funding. This discussion draws on lessons from the experience of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. The book will be of particular interest to policymakers and practitioners of vocational training in developing countries, to development policy analysts, and to students and scholars of education and training systems worldwide.