TVET and Higher Education for Boosting Road Infrastructure Development and Growth of Energy Services (THE BRIDGES)

Granted by the European Commission, the project (2017-2020) aimed to support Somalia/Somaliland in enhancing inclusive economic growth and reduce poverty through assistance in the development of high level skills both for gainful employment and sustainable economic development. In order to meet the labour demands in road infrastructure and energy sectors, the action aimed to strengthening TVET and higher education (HE) to make them high quality and responsive to the changing market situations in the selected priority sectors of the economy.

We worked together with Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Care International on the energy sector part of the project. It was important to start by conducting a needs assessment to identify the gaps between the demands of the energy sector of the countries, and the skill capacity of the stakeholders and what the academic institutes are offering. Tailoring the existing curriculum; adding new courses and revising some of the existing, training instructors (training of trainers), equipping both library and laboratory were performed to address the gaps discovered through the needs assessment. The following new courses were developed in cooperation with lecturers from the local universities and in consultation with other energy sector stakeholders: Renewable Energy Technologies; Decentral Power Generation; Power Quality Monitoring and Problem Mitigation, incl Safety; Design of Low Voltage Installations; and Economics of Energy/Electricity Services. At the end we conducted a quality assessment through attending the lectures and laboratory sessions (practical) to see how the trained trainers are delivering. It was running successfully.

Further details on: https://www.tgd.tue.nl/research-on-global-development-1/project-one-824c5