Uganda’s education and labour market could be significantly reshaped by reforms being implemented under the Technical and Vocational Education and Training Council (TVETC), with a stronger emphasis on competence, industry needs and clear career progression.
Speaking at a media briefing at the National Media Centre in Kampala, TVET Council Executive Director Moses Kasakya said the reforms are intended to move technical and vocational education away from being viewed as a second option to academic education and instead position it at the centre of Uganda’s economic transformation.
“TVET is no longer being treated simply as an alternative route for people who do not pursue academic education.
It is a central instrument for building the skilled human capital required for Uganda’s industrialisation, employment and productivity,” Kasakya said.
At the heart of the transformation is the Uganda TVET Qualifications Framework, which is designed to establish clear qualification levels, competence requirements, entry and progression pathways, recognition of prior learning and equivalence with other education qualifications.
Kasakya said the framework will give learners greater flexibility to acquire skills, upgrade them and progress through the system without being confined to a single educational pathway.
“A learner can enter TVET, acquire a competence, progress to a higher level, re-enter training later, upgrade existing skills or have competences acquired outside the formal classroom assessed and recognised,” he said.
The reforms also seek to address one of Uganda’s persistent labour-market challenges—the gap between qualifications and the skills employers actually need.
Kasakya said the new system will be driven by the principle that qualifications must demonstrate what an individual can do, rather than merely what they studied.
“The question we should increasingly ask is not simply, ‘What did this person study?’ but much more, ‘What can this person actually do?’ That is the question that matters to the employer,” he noted.
To strengthen the industry connection, TVETC has established 10 Sector Skills Expert Committees, bringing employers and practitioners into decisions on occupational skills, training programmes and curriculum development.
The Council has also approved 17 National Technician Diploma curricula covering areas including manufacturing, electrical and electronics, construction, ICT, cybersecurity, software development, data science and multimedia production.
Kasakya said quality assurance will remain central, insisting that expanding access cannot come at the expense of training standards.
“Accessibility and quality must go together,” he said, warning that Uganda cannot address affordability by “certifying incompetence or normalising substandard training.”
The reforms, he said, ultimately seek to produce a workforce that is competent, employable, productive and responsive to Uganda’s industrialisation agenda.
