ADEA supports WAEMU countries to harmonize training in core occupations

The ministers of the countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) decided in July 2012 to pool their efforts to promote 16 future core occupations for the sub-region as a whole, with each country selecting two occupations that are important to its own economic and social development and agreeing to inform all the other countries about the entire process of training course engineering and rollout.

This process is nearing completion. A small group of experts met in Bamako, from February 4 to 8, 2014, to analyze the engineering solutions proposed for the 16 core occupations. With the assistance of ADEA, the experts conducted a comparative analysis of the documents submitted by the countries and proposed a harmonized basic structure for training engineering in key occupations with a view to coordinated rollout in the entire sub-region.

An inter-country meeting will be held in late February in Dakar to decide how to follow up on this important effort to harmonize cooperation among the WAEMU countries.
The eight WAEMU member countries decided in 2010 to create a framework for cooperation among the ministers responsible for employment and vocational training. Since then, the countries have, with the support of ADEA, organized an inter-country experts’ seminar and a ministerial meeting in order to strengthen their cooperation in two main areas:
•    The creation of a Sub-Regional Observatory of Employment and Vocational Training (known by the French acronym OSREF-UEMOA) tasked with interconnecting the national observatories of employment and vocational training and harmonizing the indicators used for analysis of the labor market and training at the sub-regional level;
•    Introduction of a minimum level of cooperation among the countries. The aim is, on the basis of exchange of experiences, to elicit common conceptual and operational responses to the designated priorities, particularly concerning effective integration of young people into the labor market, validation and certification of acquired skills, and concerted implementation of training engineering.

For more information, please contact: Djénèba Diarra, Assistant of the permanent Secretary of the  WAEMU Cooperation Framework: djenebadiarra2@yahoo.fr