The 5th PASET Forum is designed to solidify PASET as a true partnership, encourage governments to join PASET and create a platform to discuss approaches, strategies and potential models to adapt education and training ecosystems to respond to the opportunities, challenges and risks of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital economy. It will bring together more than 300 participants from African governments, countries such as China, India Korea, Singapore and the US, industry leaders, development partners and academics to engage on ways to meaningfully integrate digital skills and new technologies at the higher education and TVET level and measure progress. The Forum may result in the incubation of a new PASET initiative that responds to the needs identified by stakeholders.
The PASET Forum is one of the PASET’s key knowledge sharing events that convenes diverse stakeholders for a rich exchange of strategies and experiences to build high quality technical and scientific capacity in the sub-Saharan African (SSA) region. Since its inception in 2013, PASET has organized four Forums around Africa that have seen the participation of Heads of State, Ministers of Education and high-level officials from over 20 African governments, representatives from Brazil, China, India, Korea and other partner countries, private sector, and academia and development partners. The PASET Forums have provided an ideal space to incubate new regional PASET initiatives, expand existing programs and initiate new partnerships between SSA governments and partner countries and donors. Operationalizing such initiatives and mobilizing country and other financing for them is a unique feature of PASET, which has shown concrete results in a short space of time.
With high level ministerial representation from over 20 African countries, the 5th PASET Forum will enable participating countries to chart a path for the medium term, focusing on the priority issues that they need to address in order to prepare their higher education and TVET systems for the upcoming changes. University and TVET leaders will also be able to reflect on the emerging skills needs, especially digital skills, the opportunities for using digital technology to change the delivery of their programs and how they can help to drive Africa’s transformation using science and technology.
Objectives
The objectives of the 5th PASET Forum include the following:
- Explain the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the opportunities and risks for Africa
- Share global models and approaches to adapt higher education and TVET ecosystems to disruptive changes brought about by the 4IR and digital economy
- Provide update on PASET’s growth and progress and strengthen PASET as partnership
- Mobilize financing and technical assistance for PASET’s initiatives among SSA governments, partner countries and organizations, private sector, development partners and donors
- Deliberate on new PASET initiatives related to developing digital skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and help countries formulate action plans
About PASET
The Partnership for skills in Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology (PASET) was launched in 2013 by the Governments of Senegal, Ethiopia and Rwanda with facilitation by the World Bank. It aims to address systemic gaps in skills and knowledge in Sub-Saharan Africa’s priority ASET fields, and to build the capacity of African education and training institutions to train high quality technicians, engineers and scientists to meet the demands of the economy. Learn More
Last Updated: May 22, 2019