VET4Africa – Vocational Education and Training for Africa

After a two-year break due to the pandemic, at the end of February 2022, it was finally possible to bring a group of African vocational school teachers back to the Ecological Education Centre in Wildpoldsried in the beautiful Allgäu region to continue their further training with their German mentors.

Most of the African teachers from six different countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia and Ghana) had already attended a first photovoltaic course (PV1) in Wildpoldsried (Bavaria) in 2018/2019 and subsequently brought this knowledge into their own teaching at the respective institutes. This spring they now spent another two weeks in Germany for the second course (PV2) "Planning, installation and operation of small island grids". The goal of the German instructors in vocational schools is to support African colleagues in the topic of photovoltaics and renewable energies and to show how modern technology can make the sun's energy usable for everyone.

With great commitment, the vocational school teachers trained their ambitious African colleagues, who could proudly look at their functioning systems at the end of the 2-week training. Satisfied with accumulated knowledge about photovoltaics, they travelled back to their home countries on 12 March 2022 to once again incorporate the newly acquired knowledge into their own teaching and to train their own specialists. 

The German mentors are available as supervisors and support their African colleagues in implementing and applying what they have learned in their home country. Experience shows that the mentoring assignments create close relationships between the German and African vocational school teachers. The next trip of a mentor to Africa is scheduled for the Bavarian Easter holidays to Ethiopia!

For more information please visit: www.vet4africa.com/de/