Organized by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the four-day event was dedicated to promoting the role and the sustainability of public-private partnerships for industrial skills development, and to sharing best practices and lessons learnt from these partnerships across the globe, in particular in developing countries.

Attendants were able to participate to a variety of workshops and meet actors of the public, private and development areas interested in enhancing such initiatives; AGEVEC, a training academy in heavy machinery maintenance targeting youth from Morocco, Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire was furthermore visited, to serve as a concrete example of what these partnerships can accomplish.

“Events such as this one are always an eye-opener for me”, declared R.V. Padmanabhan, Chief Technical Advisor of ZAMITA and JHEOS, two public-private development partnerships based in Zambia and Liberia. “This is the best platform to discover new ideas and practices, adapt them to our contexts, and better face our challenges.”

The LKDF is a joint initiative between UNIDO and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), which seeks to promote industrial skills development among young people in emerging economies. In particular, the facility supports the establishment and upgrading of local industrial training academies to help meet the labour market’s increasing demand for skilled employees.

Under this initiative, partnerships have been notably formed with public bodies and private sector companies, for the creation of vocational training centers specialized in heavy machinery maintenance in Iraq, Ethiopia, Morocco, Zambia and Liberia.

“The LKDF makes the impossible become possible”, said Teppo Kettula, CEO of Aika Group, a partner of the SADC Forest project, a training program on sustainable forest management currently being implemented in South Africa.

For more information about the APLW2016 including the agenda and meeting reports, please click here.

For more information on public-private development partnerships (PPDPs), please visit the LKDF’s About Section, or contact:

Virpi Stucki
UNIDO Industrial Development Officer
email

.