Technical and vocational education round table: Minister Tony Mwaba closes the 1st edition

Tony Mwaba Kazadi, Minister of Primary, Secondary, and Technical Education (EPST), closed the roundtable on technical and vocational education on Thursday, August 17, 2023, under the theme “TVE: A Driver of the Country’s Socioeconomic Growth.” The objective is to assess the state of technical and vocational education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to make it more attractive and relevant. In closing the two-day session, Tony Mwaba thanked the participants for the quality of their insights and expressed the hope that the technical and vocational programs currently offered by the EPST would be adapted to the real needs of the Congolese environment. "I am thinking in particular of the issue of the EPST’s educational offerings, the attractiveness of technical and vocational education programs, and their adaptability to the needs of the country’s economy," said Minister Tony Mwaba. The head of the EPST also highlighted the need for an assessment of technical and vocational education institutions to address the lack of laboratory equipment and teaching materials, the obsolescence of existing resources, and the advanced state of disrepair of its buildings. At the conclusion of the two-day meeting, the minister instructed the secretary general to form a small team to develop a roadmap for implementing the recommendations made during the session. As a reminder, this meeting, which concludes today, was opened last Wednesday by EPST Secretary General Christine Nepa-Nepa. In her opening remarks, the head of the EPST administration highlighted the low student enrollment and the uneven distribution of technical and vocational schools across the country. “Action must be taken to revitalize technical and vocational education,” she stated. It should be noted that approximately 300 people took part in this first roundtable, including 64 provincial directors, senior inspectors, delegates from the Office of the President of the Republic, as well as technical and financial partners of the Congolese government in the fields of primary, secondary, and technical education. Paulin Ngenda