Technical Education And Training
A - Overview
In many developing countries, opportunities to receive quality education and training tend to be limited. Consequently, opportunities to gain sufficient earnings are limited and human resources are not effectively utilized. The fact that human resources that lead industries are not developed has become a major bottleneck to industrial promotion and development.
In addition, in response to globalization, which has promoted transition to knowledge intensive economies and progress of information communications, the role of higher education that cultivates core human resources and provides and spreads knowledge has been growing recently.
Today, as basic education is being expanded worldwide, providing basic education graduates with more options is our task. In order to ensure their social participation and lead to further economic development, we consider response to education and training after basic education to be important.
B - Our Efforts
1. Higher Education
In today’s global society, which is called the society of knowledge economy, higher education institutions are strongly required to collect, create, diffuse, and use knowledge and information. In developing countries as well, the role that should be played by higher education institutions has become greater to cultivate human resources that will lead nation-building, improve the intellectual level of the entire society, and meet the expectations of society, such as contributing to regional development.
In response to these changes in roles, our policy of supporting higher education is changing. However in recent years, our cooperation has been extended to support higher education administration and social science education. We are also making efforts to strengthen collaboration with the industry, promote regional integration, provide distance and region wide education, and expand support for students coming from surrounding countries. From the global and long term perspective, flexible cooperation activities meeting the needs and the situations of the developing countries are provided.
2. Technical Education and Training
Human resources demanded by society differ depending on the state of development in each country. In ASEAN and countries in South America, with economic development by investment of foreign capital in the background, cultivating human resources to meet the needs of industry is needed. In contrast, in sub-Saharan Africa, Southwest Asia, and post-conflict countries, industries are undeveloped and employment in large enterprises is not much expected. Therefore, it is necessary to cultivate human resources that can work in small businesses or start-up businesses based on the concept of acquiring practical basic skills, thus addressing poverty reduction and improvement of livelihood. Especially in post-conflict countries, ex-combatants who have just been demobilized are given technical training to promote social reintegration.
In order to develop industrial human resources, it is necessary to provide appropriate education and training in line with the needs of the industry by effectively coordinating with the industry. For example, in Ecuador, where human development in the engineering sector is necessary for economic development, we are implementing a project to foster trainers at Ecuadorian Occupational Training Service (SECAP) so that vocational training courses in line with the needs of local companies can be provided.
It is also necessary to make efforts to spread the outcomes of past cooperation projects to other developing countries and regions.