Interview: Educational partnership crucial to China-Ethiopia BRI cooperation, official says

ADDIS ABABA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Collaboration on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) has proved crucial to high-quality China-Ethiopia cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an Ethiopian government official has said.

Teshale Berecha, Ethiopia's state minister of Labor and Skills, told Xinhua that Ethiopia is keen to deepen TVET collaboration with China to attain the much-needed human resource capabilities and eventually a skilled workforce adaptable to the ever-evolving demands of the global job market.

The state minister stressed the crucial role of the TVET sector in the implementation of infrastructure and other socio-economic development projects under the China-proposed BRI.

"Human resource development is the critical impetus to ensuring the quality of infrastructure to be built as part of the BRI," said Berecha.

The Ethiopian government strongly emphasizes the role of the TVET sector in generating the desired trained workforce to support current and future investments across all development sectors in the country, including agriculture, infrastructure development, manufacturing, service and other development sectors, Berecha added.

The state minister said TVET collaboration with China over the past decades has produced well-trained human resources in Ethiopia, contributing to the sector's development.

"We are really grateful for the cooperation between the two countries (in the TVET sector), and we are now upgrading our cooperation to a very high level so as to deepen the previous cooperation to a more increased bilateral connection between the two countries," said the official.

The state minister said the Ethiopian government is currently reforming the education and training sector to improve its quality and relevance to the labor market.

Berecha lauded China's significant achievements in improving the training and education system, and underscored Ethiopia's aspiration to further harness the already thriving China-Ethiopia cooperation in the TVET sector.

"We need to learn a lot from the Chinese experience on how they achieved this high-level growth within a short period of time. We need to explore the 'newcomer advantage' where we can easily learn from our counterparts, like China, to cope with the dynamic environment of technology and labor market needs," the state minister said.

In its BRI cooperation with China, a host of crucial infrastructure development projects in Ethiopia, ranging from roads, railways, industrial parks, energy development projects to export-oriented industries, have yielded tangible results.