AfricaPress-Tanzania: STUDENTS of higher-learning institutions have been urged to embrace entrepreneurship education as the solution to the looming labour crisis in the country.
The advice was given here by the Vice-Chancellor of the Moshi Cooperative University (MoCU) Prof Alfred Sife when opening Teaching and Learning Pedagogical held in Moshi.
Pedagogical is the teaching and learning methodology which is meant to provide lecturers with education to enable them provide entrepreneurship education for students in the colleges where they work.
“Employment opportunities are very few compared to new graduates who enter the employment market every year; so if they (graduates) get and focus on entrepreneurship education they will be able to engage in self-employment while waiting for the jobs they applied for or decide to become full time self-employed entrepreneurs,” Prof Sife said.
He commended the organisers of the training as well as its sponsors, which he said came at the right time and that it would go a long way in empowering lecturers to provide entrepreneurship education to their students.
“The teaching environment for students for future employment as well as the job market itself has changed dramatically; so lecturers should be empowered by creating an environment that will enable them to find new ways to teach their students to be independent by establishing their own investments,” he said.
Dr James Kazoka of Tumaini Makumira University’s Dar es Salaam College (TUDARco) said the programme, which began in 2017, has shown signs of success after some students became self-employed.
“Most of the students are managing their own businesses”, he said.
Describing the circumstances that led to the achievements by the students, Dr Kazoka said it included that of giving them assignments that led to solving challenges within the community instead of just giving them theoretical education.
“This approach helped the students learn practical lessons by working in the community. The approach helped them identify challenges in the community where they applied their practical training and turned them into opportunities,” he said.
Prof Mangasini Kitundu of MoCU said that the training programme, which involved participants from TUDARco, the Moshi-based Mwenge Catholic University (MWECAU) and the hosts MoCU, is being conducted and supported by the Finland based Turku University of Applied Sciences.
“We are determined through this programme to change the way we teach so that students are educated on entrepreneurship skills,” he said.
“Several studies show that there are between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people who enter the labour market which can provide so far only just over 630,000 jobs,” he said.
Prof Kitundu said that the four-year programme, known as Fintan pedagogy training, aims to reduce the proportion of the limited number of vacancies available and that of the majority of those entering the labour market by giving priority to entrepreneurship skills to students that would enable them be self-employed after graduating.
