81274905-Promotion of Youth Employment and Vocational Training - Hybrid Learning: Industrial Mechatronics Technology in Kenya

Access to education and employment for young Kenyans are crucial for poverty reduction, political stability and sustainable economic development of the country. The high level of unemployment is a major challenge that affects youth across Kenya. Approximately 800,000 young Kenyans enter the labour market every year (total population 44.9 million). Youth unemployment (15-24 years) is almost twice as high as the overall unemployment rate (17% vs. 9.2%). The lack of qualified workers is one of the main barriers for doing business and investments in Kenya. Limited skills development opportunities hinder the employability of youth and economic development. The Kenyan technical and vocational education and training (TVET) system is characterized by often poor training quality and insufficient training in practical skills. The training infrastructure and equipment are often outdated and/or insufficient; teachers and trainers lack technical knowledge and practical skills as well as pedagogy and didactics. Many vocational training courses currently offered at Kenyan TVET schools are still not matching the actual needs of the labour market. Greater participation of the private sector in the design and implementation of vocational training is seen as an important element of Kenya's vocational training reform, which should help to improve access, quality and relevance of training. However, presently there are only a few experiences and good examples of successful cooperation between industry and Technical Training Institutes (TTIs). At the moment, the prerequisites for the implementation of employment-oriented, cooperative vocational training, in terms of content, personnel and organisation, are insufficient (core problem). Therefore, more coherent cooperative training approaches need to be developed, intensified and more strongly institutionalized. Given the importance of high-quality technical and vocational training programs in overcoming youth unemployment, Kenya and Germany agreed to cooperate within the program "Promoting Youth Employment and Vocational Training in Kenya". The program has two modules: (1) the financial cooperation module, implemented by the German Development Bank (KfW), which mainly provides infrastructure and equipment to TTIs and (2) the technical cooperation module, implemented by GIZ. The GIZ module aims to improve the prerequisites for the pilot implementation of employment-oriented cooperative TVET. For this, the module improves the content-related, personnel and organisational aspects. This tender seeks to develop a hybrid learning concept for the Kenyan cooperative training course of "Industrial Mechatronics Technology" at the Kiambu Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) together with actors from the public and the private sector. Subsequently, the contractor shall pilot the implementation of the hybrid learning concept into practice at the selected training institute.