President Paul Kagame has promised to ensure that all 416 sectors of the country have more than one Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) centers.
President Kagame made the remarks this June 17, 2024, during an interactive press conference with Rwanda Television in which one citizen from Kirehe district (Louise Mukangango- a teacher by profession) asked a question about the government plans to improve technical education.
Mukangango thanked the President for his leadership which has improved the quality of education in many aspects such as increased teachers’ salaries, numbers of children attending school, more classrooms (over 27,000) constructed since COVID-19, access to meals at school, however highlighted gaps in access to technical education.
“Your excellency the President of the Republic, I have a wish, based on the productivity of technical schools, where children are graduating and able to create jobs and solve their problems. We are asking that the number of technical schools are increased from one school in each sector to at least two schools,” Mukangango said.
In response, President Kagame said that so far a lot has been done to establish a TVET school in each sector but more and more will be done soon.
“We want to do more and reach every place so that these schools are closer (to the community),” Kagame promised and noted that the current progress indicates that there has been 90% reach in all 416 sectors.
“But we don’t want to leave back that remaining 10 percent. I promise that we will speed this up. Thank you for raising this,” Kagame said.
Under the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1)2017- 2024) Rwanda has focused on improving technical education as a strategy to create more hands-on skills and jobs to meet its targets of creating at least 1.5million jobs per year.
In this, the government is focusing on having 60% of students study technical skills and that 70% of the students who graduate in technical education get jobs in the first year after graduation.
