The government’s effort to build a stronger Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system is increasingly looking beyond its borders—not for a model to copy wholesale, but for tested African approaches that can be adapted to the country’s own institutional, economic and labor-market realities.
Engagements by the Director General of the Agricultural and Industrial Training Bureau (AITB), Abraham Billy, last week on institutional experiences in Uganda and Rwanda, have brought into sharper focus a central question facing Liberia’s TVET reform—How should a modern skills system divide responsibilities among regulators, training providers, assessment bodies, qualifications authorities and industry while ensuring that the pieces work as one system?
The emerging answer from these African experiences is significant. Billy also visited his Botswana counterparts a few months ago.
A strong TVET system does not necessarily require every responsibility to be concentrated in one institution, Billy noted after his Kampala and Kigali visits. What matters is whether mandates are clearly defined, standards are common, functions complement rather than duplicate one another, and accountability connects the entire skills-development chain.
That lesson, for Liberia, could prove particularly important as AITB works to strengthen registration, licensing, accreditation, quality assurance and skills regulation.
Across Africa, TVET systems are being asked to solve increasingly similar problems such as youth unemployment, skills mismatches, rapidly changing technology, weak links between training institutions and employers, and qualifications that do not always translate into employment.
But countries are responding differently.
Botswana has developed a qualifications and quality-assurance architecture that connects TVET with higher and general education through the National Credit and Qualifications Framework (NCQF).
Uganda has moved toward a more explicit institutional separation between regulation and assessment under its 2025 TVET Act.
Rwanda, meanwhile, has built a coordinated TVET system emphasizing competency-based training, curriculum development, quality assurance, industry engagement, workplace learning and digitalization.
These differences provide Liberia with an opportunity to compare not simply what institutions exist, but why particular functions are located where they are and how those functions interact.
Uganda: Separating regulation from assessment
Uganda offers a somewhat different but equally instructive model.
Under Uganda’s TVET Act of 2025, the TVET Council serves as the national regulator responsible for regulation, coordination and strategic oversight, while the Uganda Vocational and Technical Assessment Board (UVTAB) is responsible for assessment and certification of competencies and for curriculum and training-package development.
There is also a TVET Council that sets standards and licenses institutions and trainers.
Uganda’s legislation also provides for a qualifications framework, sector skills committees and accreditation of programs and providers.
Its law requires TVET providers to meet requirements relating to qualified staff, facilities, equipment, financial capacity and training standards before program accreditation is granted.
That creates a potentially useful lesson for Liberia—registration should not automatically mean quality.
Rwanda: The power of coordinated skills development
Rwanda offers another important lesson—particularly in competency-based training, curriculum relevance, industry engagement and institutional coordination.
The Rwanda TVET Board (RTB) coordinates TVET development from Level 1 to Level 5 and is responsible for areas including curriculum and instructional materials, trainer development, standards compliance, workplace learning, industry attachments, tracer surveys and other quality-related functions.
Its curriculum function is particularly relevant to Liberia.
RTB says it regularly engages technical expert groups, skills councils, professional bodies and industry to ensure curricula respond to changing labor-market needs and to develop occupational standards that inform curriculum development.
Rwanda has also placed considerable emphasis on workplace learning and Dual TVET, which combines classroom instruction with practical workplace experience.
For Liberia, that offers an important lesson. TVET cannot be transformed simply by regulating training institutions. The system must remain connected to the world of work.
In December 2022, Rwanda TVET Board, Nigeria’s National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and Rwanda Cooperation Initiative signed an agreement to facilitate cooperation in technical skills development. The areas identified included policy development, career and curriculum development, national/skills qualifications frameworks and technology hubs.
That experience demonstrates that African countries do not have to continually import institutional solutions from outside the continent.
Africa increasingly possesses its own pool of practical policy and institutional experience.
Botswana: Multiple institutions, one coherent framework
Botswana offers perhaps the clearest lesson on the question of institutional architecture.
The country operates the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA), which maintains the National Credit and Qualifications Framework and coordinates quality assurance across general education, TVET and higher education.
“This means that Botswana does not necessarily rely on a single institution to perform every function in the skills ecosystem,” Billy told this reporter. “Instead, it creates institutional specialization within an overarching framework.”
Its National Credit and Qualifications Framework Services, for example, provides the framework underpinning quality assurance across education and training.
That approach offers an important lesson for Liberia, the AITB DG noted.
The strategic opportunity, for Liberia, is to construct a regulatory pathway that is simple enough for institutions and learners to understand but robust enough to protect the credibility of Liberia’s TVET system.
The engagements in Gaborone, Kampala and Kigali should consequently be viewed as more than official study visits.
They can become the foundation for long-term African peer partnerships.
AITB could use these relationships to establish structured technical exchanges involving regulators, assessors, curriculum developers, TVET administrators, instructors, industry representatives and policymakers.
Liberia could benchmark specific functions rather than simply benchmark institutions.
Ultimately, the success of Liberia’s TVET reform will not be determined by the number of institutions registered or regulations issued.
It will be measured by whether a young Liberian who enters a training program can emerge with a credible, verifiable and market-relevant skill.
It will be measured by whether employers trust Liberian TVET qualifications.
It will be measured by whether graduates can secure employment, start businesses or improve their productivity.
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