The Rwandan government plans to source English teachers from Zambia as its strategy of advancing Technical and Vocational Education and Training takes shape. Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said.
The minister made the remarks during a media briefing after holding bilateral talks with her Zambian counterpart Harry Kalaba, who is in Rwanda for a four-day working visit. The new times reported.
Mushikiwabo said that they had been exploring good teachers and Zambia has had a very good education system for many years and hence Zambia was identified as a source for teachers.
Rwanda has previously sought English- speaking teachers from the neighbouring countries. This is after it joined the Commonwealth.
“We particularly need teachers in TVET schools where we are in the process of developing different curricula and try to get what is necessary for our orientation towards TVETs,” Mushikiwabo said.
She added that government is also looking at teaching expertise in mining to develop advanced skills in areas of knowledge, legal, and technical capacity and that Zambia was identified for its advanced mining sector.
Currently, there are about 45,000 TVET teachers in both private and public schools, covering vocational training schools, technical schools and polytechnic institutions.
The Minister of State in charge TVET, Albert Nsengiyumva, told The New Times that Vocational education is on the rise and they were in the process of training the teachers and estimated that in the next three years a 30 per cent increment of the number of teachers will be needed.
With regards to mining studies, Nsengiyumva said the mining sector is still labour intensive which is why government wants to have 90 per cent of the miners acquire vocational skills.
Meanwhile, Zambia has also expressed interest in sourcing French-teaching personnel from Rwanda.
“Rwanda showed extra-ordinary ability of moving from being a francophone country to an Anglophone country and Zambia wants to extrapolate as much as it can from Rwanda. With that regard we are looking into ways of how we can also have some French teaching teachers from Rwanda to come to Zambia,” Minister Kalaba said.
Kalaba said the two nations are enthusiastic to take their relations to another level in the framework of south-south cooperation.
“It is high time that the two countries start insisting on convergences rather than divergences. There is so much that bring us together as a people and we need to exploit that potential. We also acknowledge the trade potential between the two countries and we need to exploit that potential as well,” he said.
Zambia is the eighth copper producing country in the world and, according to Kalaba, his country is interested in having its significant portion of copper exports coming to Rwanda.
