Recognition of Acquired Skills in Mozambique

The Government of Mozambique has been implementing a broad Vocational Education Reform programme, which aims to establish an integrated, coherent and flexible Vocational Education System, whose fundamental objective is to raise the professional qualification of the active population, and to promote the skills necessary for personal development, oriented to the demands of the labour market.

In this process of qualification of the active population, special attention should be given to citizens who, although they have acquired competencies throughout their lives, particularly through their professional experience, do not have those same competencies formally recognised or certified. This situation is harmful both for those citizens who face difficulties in applying for a job and for the country that, normally, cannot count on this significant fringe of the national labour force.

Therefore, Swisscontact facilitates the process for designing and implementing the process of Recognition of Acquired Skills, which aims to guide, regulate and facilitate the certification of competencies and respective attribution of credits resulting from the verification, assessment and certification of vocational competencies acquired through the lifelong learning process, namely in work or non-formal and informal training contexts.

The implementation arose under a memorandum of understanding between the National Vocational Education Authority, the regulatory body responsible for ensuring the Quality of Vocational Education in the country, and Swisscontact, through the Skills to Build project.

In the past months, the training of facilitators and evaluators was supervised, the recruitment phase of the candidates was initiated, and the training centers were prepared for the recognition of acquired competencies.

The Skills to Build project is financed by Happel Foundation, among other donors. As part of the Swisscontact Development Programme, it is co-financed by SDC (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs FDFA).