The success of campaigns to link Technical Vocational Education and Training institutions (TVET) and industries to ensure graduates emerge with requisite market oriented skills especially in value addition chains in agriculture remain low in Embu County.
Processing and value addition of multimillion cash crops such as coffee, tea, avocado, macadamia among others has remained the domain of establishments operated by elderly farmers and industrialists christened cartels.
Talking to Sacco Review, agricultural stakeholders suggested that agro based systems needed to be liberated from the old systems of management to allow full scale value addition sector through allowing young agro-Tech qualified graduates and technicians to enter the industries.
The interim members of the stalled Kiamuringa Village Technical Centre, which never started operations despite completion more than 15 years ago, the spokesperson Nicholas Njeru, asked for more pro-action to ensure TVET trained graduates earned work and business in agricultural based value addition chains.
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According to Njeru, few TVETs in Embu have tailored their courses in value addition to cover key crops such as tea and coffee despite their huge economical potential in local and export markets.
He wondered why little small and large scale value addition projects existed in Embu County to tackle coffee and tea yet the earnings continued to remain controversial with some farmers blaming huge losses to cartels.
TVETs curriculum in Embu County, Njeru suggested should be tailored towards using local resources including those drawn from the agriculture sector which is a key pillar of the region’s economy under value addition and marketing programs.
The county, Njeru said has the potential for development of technical skills in maritime sectors especially in the various rivers which could be dammed as well as in the Seven Folks Ken Gen managed dams.
He said the dams were large enough to host fishing and leisure boats for tourism purposes but failure of the KenGen to be pro-active in initiating such industries, Embu county continued to record low tourist numbers or even expand its fishing industries beyond home based small scale aquaculture pipe, rain and river water fed dams.
He suggested that TVETs starts initiatives to train young schools leavers to specially work with various cash crops in the region and well as fish to prepare the county to venture into value addition and market its finished products for better profits in local and international markets.
At the same time, TVETs Principal Secretary (PS) Dr Esther Thaara Muoria insists that institutions should develop strong academia-public-private partnerships.
“Such bonds will propel the industry to identify market gaps that institutions should fill through training and the development of Competency Based Education and Training(CBET) courses,’’ Muoria said.
According to the PS, technological advancement and changing market needs continue to disrupt automotive solutions and hence the need for industries to work with educational institutions to enhance marketable skills and talents.
By Robert Nyagah
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