The Chairperson of TVET Council, Allen Kagina has said that the solution to youth unemployment lies in employer involvement in training ensuring that young people acquire skills that match the needs of the job market.
Kagina made the remarks while flagging off Team Uganda to participate in the 2026 WorldSkills International competition in Shanghai, China.
Kagina said that countries with the lowest youth unemployment rates involve employers in training young people and shaping what they are taught.
“Countries like Germany, Switzerland, and Australia have built their economies on skilling. They run a dual apprenticeship system where the employer trains, and the government certifies, and they consistently hold the lowest youth unemployment in Europe,” Kagina said.
The comparison is extended to Asia as various countries such as Korea, Singapore and China each approach technical training as a matter of industrial policy rather than social welfare.
About 20 percent of young people worldwide (approximately 260 million) are neither employed nor in education or training. A joint study by the World Bank, the International Labour Organisation and UNESCO shows that TVET systems in many low and middle-income countries do not match labour market needs. Africa’s position is sharper because the continent’s population is young and growing, while its formal job creation is not.
This, Kagina said, is why this WorldSkills competition matters.
“Skills Competitions do three things which a curriculum cannot: they impose an external standard. We have a standard here that we are working with, and we may be quite happy with our standard, but when we get there in Shanghai, we are going to realize what the world standard is,” she said.
She added that skills competitions expose the gap between national and international practice.
Kagina further said that skills competitions raise a nation’s prestige at the international level.
She however noted that Uganda’s deepest obstacle to skilling is not a shortage of classrooms, but a lingering stigma that treats vocational training as a fallback for academic failure.
“I pray that in my lifetime we will forget that we used to have such a terrible belief system that you send the failures to vocational education; that the children we are giving birth to will choose skilling as the first choice,” she said.
Kagina told Team Uganda that their mission in Shanghai goes beyond winning medals. “As we flag off our team, I want to emphasize that WorldSkills is not simply about winning medals; it is an investment in our young people and in our future, and an investment in Uganda’s skills development system,” she said, adding that the competition offers Uganda a chance to “benchmark our training, our assessment, our occupational standards, our technologies, our methodologies against international practice” and to expose Ugandan trainers and experts to modern equipment and emerging technologies to skills development.
TVET Council Executive Director Moses Kasakya described WorldSkills competitions as a platform for Uganda’s young people to prove themselves on the international stage.
“WorldSkills Platform gives Uganda an opportunity to demonstrate what our young people can do when given an opportunity to demonstrate their talents and to demonstrate that, when given the right training and mentorship, we can excel together,” Kasakya said, adding that “Uganda’s investment in TVET translates into visible competence, employability, innovation and national productivity.”
Uganda Vocational and Technical Assessment Board (UVTAB) Deputy Executive Secretary Wilfred Nahamya stressed the value of exposing Uganda’s young people to international benchmarks saying that competitions challenge young people to measure themselves against international standards.
Team Uganda comprises three competitors drawn from different technical and vocational institutions across the country: They include; Elizabeth Mirabel Mutoro, a welder from Arua Technical Institute; Paul Terran Lugobe, a chef competing in the cooking category from Hotel and Tourism Training College Jinja; and Flavia Nakaayi, a nursing competitor from Kabale Institute of Comprehensive Nursing in Kabale district.
WorldSkills Shanghai competition will run from 22 – 27 September 2026.
