Smart Step

Smart Step is a 36-month Capacity Building project in the field of Vocational Education and Training (VET) under the Erasmus+ Programme, Key Action 2: Cooperation between organisations and institutions.

The Project

Project
Smart Step: Upskilling African VET to Step forward Smart Entrepreneurship
Project number
ERASMUS-EDU-2022-CB - 101092441
Type of project
Capacity building in the field of Vocational Education and Training (VET)
Programme
Erasmus+
Time period
2022 - 2025

This international cooperation project is based on 9 partners: multilateral partnerships between organisations active in the field of VET in EU Member States and third countries associated to the Programme and third countries not associated to the Programme. The aim of this project is to prepare African students as well as possible for entrepreneurship, in order to bridge the gap between the current education system and the job market.
Thus, Smart Step's focus is on capacity development and sustainable development in Africa, with the goal of equipping teachers and learners with the necessary skills to successfully implement their owm busines ideas.

Countries concerned:

  • In Africa: Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Eritrea, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Tunisia
  • In Europe: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Finland

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Context

Africa’s working age population is expected to balloon to 1 billion in the next 25 years

Lack of access to finance and markets and need for business skills

Further barriers for youth entrepreneurs

TVET Continental Strategy to support young people to adquire professional skills

The AU-EU Skills for Youth employed Program in VET education priorities and general strategy

Objectives

Establish a comprehensive and collaborative system of exchange of good practices, learning processes, and activities to facilitate mutual knowledge.

Introduce specific training on entrepreneurship to VET teachers, tutors, and learners, encouraging them to think about sustainable innovation production and inclusiveness, adapted to their environment.

Phases

1

Analysis: Review the place given to entrepreneurship in Ghana and Cameroon in the career opportunities presented to students.
2

Design: Set up a Knowledge Exchange Platform on which to share all the training modules and capacity-building programmes developed as part of Smart Step.
3

Providing: Make entrepreneurship tools, training modules and resources available to VET centres and the local community. To do so, incubators are to be set up in VET schools to train, mentor and advise learners.

Partners

Mundus
Spain - Cordinating entity
Universitat Politecnica de Valencia
Spain
VIS - Volontariato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo
Italy
CEA-PME
Belgium
Institut de Technologie de l'Industrie, du Management et de l'Entrepreneuriat
Cameroun
Don Bosco Youth Network-West Africa Organization
Ghana
Start-Up SME Centres Limited
Ghana
Prototipi Limited
Nigeria
The support of the European Commission for the preparation of this publication does not imply acceptance of its contents, which is the sole responsibility of the authors. Therefore, the Commission is not responsible for the use that may be made of the information published here.
 

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