FEI, USAID sign MoU on upgrading vocational education in Egypt

Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on enhancing technical and vocational education in Egypt.

The MoU comes among USAID’s programme for Workforce Improvement and Skills Enhancement (WISE).

It was signed by FEI Chairman Mohamed El-Sewedy and Gregory Niblett -Manager of WISE programme- on Monday.

Through WISE project,  USAID targets improving technical secondary education to meet the needs of the job market, benefiting vocational school students and teachers as well as the private sector.

WISE is set to establish partnerships between businesses and technical schools in order to understand skills needed for employment –reducing the current skills mismatch, creating a pool of qualified candidates, and linking students with jobs.

The project covers four industrial sectors; textiles, ready-made clothes, food, and furniture, in addition to tourism sector in 11 governorates.

Hereby the MoU, Egypt’s FEI is set to apply the project on 15 industrial firms among WISE’s first phase, then to apply it on 35 additional firms in order to upgrade human resources of the industrial organisations.

WISE will improve the performance of the private sector through in-house training and improved human resource strategies that reduce staff turnover, seeking to build the capacity of business associations to advocate for policy and regulatory reforms related to labor market efficiency.