New project on improving skills, labor productivity and reducing malnutrition in South Africa
In a Dutch South African consortium consisting of Qpoint, Delphy, Stellenbosch University, Boland and Elsenburg College Stellenbosch University, MSM will jointly work on the development of Tailor-Made Training (TMT) courses that address the lack of skills of emerging commercial farmers in food processing in South Africa.
This training project will be linked to the OKP-SAF-10023 project ‘Strengthening skills of TVET staff and students for optimizing water usage & climate smart agriculture in South Africa’, where MSM, Q-Point, Stellenbosch University, Boland and Elsenburg College are collaborating in five key areas: developing the occupational standard, matching with industry skills-needs, introducing the dual system and apprenticeship approach, providing an inclusive gender, youth & marginalized groups focus and practice, and establish practical Private Public Agricultural related partnership structures.
The TMT aims for improved skills and labor productivity, achieving agricultural growth by improved agricultural production, contributing to reduced malnutrition. Emerging and small holder farmers will be enabled to contribute to food security in the regions of the Breede Gouritz, by teaching these farmers new techniques and the field of ecologically sustainable food systems with a specific focus on practical and workplace skills in the agro-processing industry. A further increase in efficiency of water use through improved technologies and knowledge systems is needed. Using best practices from the Western Cape, will contribute to a nationwide sustainable production.
MSM’s main role is to extent the “face to face” training setting with the format of online learning that offer extra opportunities to reach out to agriculture private industry related partners. In the long run, improvement of the online course elements will enhance the accessibility to learning programs of remote rural community students that were not able to come to college before (but have excess to network and internet).
Orange Knowledge Programme
This project is part of the Orange Knowledge Programme. Nuffic OKP contributes to a society’s sustainable and inclusive development by providing access to education and training for professionals and organisations in technical vocational education and training (TVET) and higher education. It is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of its development cooperation policy. The subsidy programme is managed by Nuffic, a Dutch non-profit organisation for internationalisation in education. It offers funding for long-term, demand-driven partnerships between Dutch knowledge institutions and organisations in 19 participating countries, as well as individual scholarships and Tailor-Made Trainings in all 53 selected countries. The € 195-m, five-year programme ends mid-2022, enabling tens of thousands to change their future. From the Dutch development cooperation policy, 4 priority themes have been selected on which to focus in the programme: Food and Nutrition Security; Water, Energy and Climate; Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights; and Security and Rule of Law. Cross-cutting themes in this programme are inclusion, employability and environmental sustainability.
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