Welcoming Roche as SCBF’s newest member

Roche, the world’s largest biotech company and a global leader in in-vitro diagnostics, has joined SCBF as the newest member. Commitment from such private partners help in leveraging of both public and private resources to support the development of an enabling ecosystem for financial inclusion. Read more about the partnership here.

Knowledge & Insights:

• Southern Voice in ESG: Risk and Opportunity Inquiry
  The Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank (FMO) and SCBF, sponsored a study undertaken by Shining Rock Ventures to understand the impact of ESG frameworks on companies operating in the Global South or emerging markets. Read more about it here. 
  
  
• Impact created by Health Microinsurance pilot in Ghana and Malawi
  Health microinsurance can be a powerful tool for vulnerable individuals to deal with health emergencies. To get an understanding of the impact created by such products, SCBF had partnered with VisionFund to pilot health microinsurance with World Vision Savings groups in Ghana and Malawi. Read the full report here that summarises the results of the pilot, learnings and the next steps.

New projects: Building resilience through climate, life and health insurance; digital finance and financial education

Since our last update, we have co-funded 9 exciting projects focusing on insurance, digital finance and financial education:

• In India, the IBISA Network and Avanti Finance will work on providing climate insurance to smallholder farmers
  
  
• In India, Saathealth is expanding the family health intervention to address the financial health needs of low-income users
  
  
• In Kenya, Democrance DMCC, Ilara Health, Emerging Markets, Paa and APA Insurance will work on scaling the uptake of hybrid micro-health insurance amongst informal sector (gig) workers and smallholder farmers
  
  
• In Kenya, Hiveonline and Association of Women in Agriculture Kenya (AWAK) will work on enhancing agricultural cooperatives and rural economies with digital management and finance
  
  
• In Madagascar, Flow Madagascar will deploy a float financing solution to address the issue of agent liquidity and ensure mobile money agents can efficiently serve clients
  
  
• In Senegal, Symbiotics and Baobab Senegal will be working to support access to finance of women's groups in rural areas through digital financial education, mobile banking and mini-kiosks
  
  
• In Senegal, Women's World Banking (WWB) is supporting Baobab Senegal SA in designing and launching a Caregiver solution for Baobab’s customers
  
  
• In Zambia, Briisk Limited will provide support to Prudential Life Assurance for scaling Upendo Life Cash Boost - the first fully digital life insurance product for low-income clients in Zambia
  
  
• In Zambia, the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) along with Mayfair Insurance and other stakeholders is working on scaling up a macro resilience bundling (seed + agrochemical + fertilizer) programme for smallholder farmers

Mr. Diepak Elmer (Co-Head Section Economy and Education, SDC) and Mr. Patrick Luternauer (Principal Relationship Lead Europe, IFC) were elected to the SCBF Board of Directors. Watch what they were saying on joining the board (videos below)  and  read more here.

Diepak Elmer, Co-Head Section Economy and Education, SDC

Patrick Luternauer, Principal Relationship Lead Europe, IFC

On the 15th of February Mozaik Foundation opened its Annual Conference with over 300 guests in Sarajevo, and over 400 followers of the live broadcast in their lonac.pro community. They gathered young people from over 50 local communities as well as representatives of the governmental, business, and development sectors. 

The conference was officially opened by a panel with H.E. Daniel Hunn - Ambassador of Switzerland in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Eva Smedberg - Head of the Swedish Development Agency at the Embassy of Sweden in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Azra Sarić - President of the Board of Directors of Mozaik Foundation, and Zoran Puljić - Director of Mozaik Foundation. 

On this occasion, H.E. Daniel Hunn stated: “Switzerland has been supporting the Mozaik Foundation since 2019, investing around 8 million KM so far. We are proud that Mozaik as a local organization engages so many partners in supporting and promoting the entrepreneurship of young people from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina. This joint partnership creates opportunities for the young generation to build capacity, build networks, and become successful with their businesses here, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Active engagement of youth in communities will hopefully lead politicians to create favorable conditions for youth development in the country."

Mozaik celebrated 15 years of its YouthBanks, the biggest voluntary program in the region that gathers over 10.000 young volunteers every year. Municipalities recognized the significance of the program and secured 4.737.100 BAM of public funds to support youth-led microbusinesses and projects in the next four years. 61 municipal representatives from 47 communities joined the Conference. 

The SDC's Programme for Strengthening Technical Education (PROFET) is the very first vocational education and training programme in Cuba, where until now the literacy campaign and academic training, the hallmark of the Cuban Revolution, have been at the forefront of educational measures. Switzerland once again pioneered this sector, where after an exploratory phase in June 2017 and the actual launch in 2019, its second and final phase is underway and will end in June 2024.

The aim of PROFET is to improve young people's access to income and jobs by improving the quality of teaching in selected technical vocational training disciplines such as construction, services in the tourism sector, mechanised agriculture, communications and transport. A special focus is placed on women and disadvantaged population groups such as Afro-Cubans and, more recently, people with disabilities.

The total contribution of Swiss cooperation is more than 8 million Swiss francs and the main implementing partners are the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and 49 polytechnic institutes throughout the country on the Cuban side, as well as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the non-governmental organisation Humanity and Inclusion.

After more than four years of implementation, the project has achieved relevant progress in the transformation of professional technical education in two areas, namely, on the one hand, in strengthening practical teaching and demand-driven linkages between education and the state and private production sectors, and, on the other hand, in efforts to promote equality in education through the advancement of women and in favour of inclusion of people from socially lower classes, especially people of colour and with disabilities.

The results achieved so far are impressive: to date, thanks to PROFET, almost 15,000 students, 5,000 of them women, have benefited from the improved curricula for practical training and the modernisation of technological equipment. Furthermore, there has been a doubling of the number of learners with internships in production units; more companies, including the private sector, have been able to offer students direct training in a company (from 154 in 2020 to 272 in 2022). Approximately 2500 teachers (1360 of whom were women) were trained in curriculum renewal and inclusive education, modelled on the dual model. Finally, the programme also generated a systemic impact by contributing to the expansion of the Cuban Education Act and to the creation of the Observatory in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, which helped monitor employment policies and ensured the adaptation of technical training provision to the requirements of the production sector. Swiss institutions are also involved in teacher training, namely the Bern University of Applied Sciences, the Center for Development and Cooperation of the University of Bern (CDC) and the Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training (SFUVET).

The programme has also created two social inclusion tools: the Mapping of Employment and Training Opportunities for People with Disabilities and the Gender Equality and Inclusion Strategy for Vocational Education and Training in Cuba. With its implementation, PROFET has increased the percentage of students in technical colleges by almost 5 per cent (from 32 % to 36.8 %). On average, women account for more than 40 % of all beneficiaries of the measures taken and 350 people with disabilities receive direct counselling and subsequent access to training and employment. 

PROFET is in constant dialogue with the authorities of the Ministry of Education and is making progress in the current public debate on the elaboration of policies to improve professional technical training in Cuba, especially in tourism and construction. This, together with the partnership with UNDP, is one of the cornerstones for the sustainability of results after the SDC's bilateral programme exits Cuba at the end of 2024. 

On 9th February 2023, the Skills for Employment Tanzania (SET) project convened a conference to officially introduce the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme for Folks Development College (FDC). The conference was held in Morogoro and attended by representatives from the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MoEST) as well as principals and tutors representing all seven zones of FDCs in Tanzania.

The CPD programme outlines the learning activities professionals within the FDCs will engage in to develop and enhance their abilities. CPD will support FDC staff in sharing knowledge and experiences, explore new ideas, and further develop their teaching strategies and techniques to improve teaching and learning of youth in the colleges.

The conference was the last step leading to the CPD pilot implementation within the coastal zone, where methodologies and tools will be tested before further being rolled-out to other FDC zones. Participants from the conference voiced their interest and support for CPD, which is being promoted by the Government of Tanzania for the education and training sector as it is cost-effective and efficient in reaching professionals located in schools and other educational institutions throughout Tanzania.

The CPD programme for FDCs in Tanzania is one intervention of the SET project which is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) through the Embassy of Switzerland in Tanzania and implemented in partnership with the MoEST by Swisscontact in Tanzania.

After ten years of working to develop professional recruitment and job intermediation services, the SDC project EYE (Enhancing Youth Employment) collaborated with Kosovajob – a leading job portal in Kosovo to organize the first HR summit PowerToHR. The summit gathered for the first time 356 professionals of HR and CEOs from Kosovo companies who paid for tickets to learn, exchange and network on topics of digital recruitment, attracting talents and keep employees happy. Speakers with international experience were from Meta, LinkedIn, and former BBC Academy director. While the panel discussions organized during the event gave the local perspective, showed how different companies are dealing with employer branding and recruitment challenges. This summit was about positively impacting both employees and society, from implementing sustainable practices to fostering diverse and inclusive workplaces. 

As the field of professional human resources is still evolving in Kosovo, the EYE project initiated this summit which is intended now to become an annual event. The role of the EYE project was to facilitate, support and buy down the risk of organizing an event of this scale in Kosovo. It showed a sustainable model of events which aims to educate local companies on topics related to HR and working with youth. 

“Summits such as PowertoHR is the best way to gather people. Today we have managed to gather all HR people in one place to share experiences and talk about challenges and create a culture of gathering every year and giving our best. This was a starting point, a huge step because some people can also find business opportunities or even find their next employer” said Arion Rizaj, CEO and Founder of Kosovajob, the biggest job portal in Kosovo.

The best thing about this event is that 90% of attendees have declared that they have learned something new and will apply it in their job.

Moreover, one of participants Arban Abrashi, HR manager at Teleperformance company declared that “The network which is created here between the field professionals and jobseekers is very beneficial to all young people of this country”.

Concluding with a networking event, the first HR summit was a real success, proving the relevance, needs and willingness of the private sector to learn on HR topics. The energy and enthusiasm in the room was evident, and it was clear that everyone was eager to learn and share their experiences.

EYE is a project of the Swiss Development Cooperation Office in Kosovo, implemented by Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation and MDA. The project has worked in the last ten years in job intermediation services such as recruitment and career guidance. 

Pictures from the event can be viewed here.

Since 2013, the MENA Region has seen a lot of migration because of the ongoing conflicts and tension in the region, which cause more refugees and asylum seekers to flee into Egypt. With Egypt hosting an estimated 9 million migrants in 2022, many refugees and migrants in Egypt face several vulnerabilities, including barriers to safe residency, and limited access to education and decent employment opportunities. 

Against this backdrop, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is funding the Youth for Future (Y4F) project in Egypt to improve livelihood opportunities and strengthen the socio-economic resilience of migrants, refugees, and host community youth. Jointly implemented by the ILO and UNICEF in nine governorates, the project uses a three-pronged approach that combines skills development and career guidance services at the individual (micro) level, with awareness raising and capacity development of key stakeholders at the institutional (meso) level and policy engagement on the national (macro) level.

As a result of SDC’s support and ILO’s interventions under the Y4F project, more than 1,000 previously unemployed youth were able to link up with decent employment or start their own businesses by the end of 2022. Around half of those employed were refugees and migrants who often face labour market integration challenges and 60% were females, traditionally marked by lower labour force participation rates. During the same period, more than 3,300 young people were equipped with improved employability skills by ILO’s innovative skilling programs targeting youth including Job Search Clubs, apprenticeship and sports for development. 8,150 refugees, migrants and Egyptian youth are expected to benefit from ILO’s programming by the end of the project’s Phase I in 2024. 

Furthermore, and in light of the challenges and opportunities brought forward by the COVID-19 pandemic, the ILO is providing youth in Egypt with digital tools, including the Maharati or ‘my skills’ mobile application that supports youth to further hone their skills and aids them as they seek employment.

Maharati: mobile application supporting refugees, migrants, and Egyptian youth in their job search

Maharati is a mobile application that gives refugees, migrants, and Egyptian youth remote access to useful resources, which help guide their job search endeavours.

With more than 3,000 youth having benefited from the app as of February 2023, Maharati not only elevates employability and digital skills of young refugees, migrants and Egyptians, but also helps them apply to decent jobs. Through the application, job seekers learn how to write a CV, assess their skills, analyze job announcements and their suitability, browse job listings, watch instructional videos, and access other resources on how to prepare for an interview. They can even practice job interviews using the virtual reality feature.

The SDC youth employment project RisiAlbania implemented by Helvetas and Partners Albania celebrated 10 years of successful project implementation on the 1st of March. 

RisiAlbania is one of the first projects in the Western Balkans that has applied the MSD approach by targeting both job creation and employability of young people in an inclusive way.  Risi means innovation in Albanian, and truly, the project has introduced many innovations in Albania. 

A set of case studies illustrates these innovations that ultimately lead to more and better jobs for young people. Have a look at these case studies that range from how young people acquire the necessary skills (supply), to how career guidance leads to informed career choices (intermediation), to how market systems interventions in Albania’s ICT, tourism and agricultural sectors lead to more jobs (demand). 

Young Albanians make informed career decisions:
Case Study on how career guidance leads to higher employability

Unlocking job creation for youth through certification:
the example of GLOBALG.A.P. in Albania

 Innovation for employment in Albania’s ICT sector:
Strengthening the ecosystem for the provision of information security services

Gaining labour market skills through non-formal training

Case Study: Innovation for employment in Albania's tourism sector

The technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector in Uzbekistan has weathered dramatic changes in recent years, creating challenges not only for the people delivering and participating in TVET, but also those charged with leading the sector. 

At the end of 2022, a Helvetas-commissioned study by the CEMETS Education Systems Reform Lab, which is part of the public research university ETH Zurich, highlighted some of the challenges involved with governing TVET in Uzbekistan. New changes implemented at the start of 2023 have already altered the TVET landscape, but the fundamental challenges remain the same.

Navigating a changing context

Until the end of the last decade, TVET was the main education pathway for young people in Uzbekistan. In 2015, 93% percent of all students in upper secondary education were in TVET (ETF 2017, p. 57).  Through 2017, TVET was part of the country’s 11-year compulsory education. The education sector reform, which was formalized in 2019, replaced compulsory TVET education with optional, fee-based TVET programs that last 1.5 to 2 years. 

Nearly 1,500 TVET institutions had been delivering training to over a million students before 2017 according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), but the sector has largely collapsed since the reform. Today, UNESCO reports that only 23.2% of Uzbekistan’s youth participate in TVET. This is low compared to an average just over 40% in OECD countries or over 60% in Switzerland (OECD), and probably too few to meet employers’ needs for skills.

The TVET sector had governance challenges when it was part of the compulsory education system, and those challenges were exacerbated by the change. According to the ADB, skills mismatch was a major problem. Employers could not find the skills they needed to grow, especially industrial enterprises among whom nearly half could not find the qualified workers they needed. This was driven by the system’s focus on knowledge rather than competencies, the lack of workplace learning, and issues with processes of assessment, certification and curriculum development. There was little career guidance for students and very limited interfacing between TVET and industry. In general, TVET was unable to connect skills supply and demand.

Until 2022, 13 ministries and 14 agencies were charged with aspects of coordinating skills development and delivering TVET. At the start of 2023, the latest presidential decree merged a number of ministries: the government was reduced from 25 to 21 ministries and from 61 to 28 agencies. As a result, about 20 ministries and agencies (instead of the previous 27) are now responsible for TVET. This leads to fewer “owners” of TVET and more focused mandates, but fragmentation remains an issue. The advantage of this reform is that public structures are being reduced , the system is more coherent and with prospects to function better in terms of coordination and clarity of mandates. These changes have been extensively advocated for by Helvetas Uzbekistan within the frameworks of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation-funded VET4UZ project, a systemic intervention designed to support TVET reform in Uzbekistan by improving governance, building quality assurance practices, and increasing teacher performance and private sector engagement.

As part of these reforms, the Ministry of Higher Education and TVET became the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Innovation. The function of Deputy Minister for TVET was eliminated, effectively cutting the TVET sector out of the highest levels of governance and making its leadership unclear, for instance the VET colleges have two “parents”: the Ministry of Higher Education and TVET, and the line ministry, their roles and responsibilities being often blurred. Despite these changes, most ministries remain involved in TVET governance, including ministries like Tourism, Agriculture, and Labor. These ministries do not have any authority over curriculum content, but do receive and direct funding for the TVET colleges under their authority. 

The effects of fragmented TVET governance

In 2022, Helvetas Uzbekistan partnered with ETH Zurich to produce a study of TVET governance in Uzbekistan based on 646 survey responses across all levels and actors involved in TVET governance. The study found that satisfaction with TVET governance is low—approximately 2.2 on a 1-to-5-point scale—both in general and for every aspect of governance. Actors at the national level are somewhat more satisfied than lower-level actors by about half a point. 

The study found that TVET governance in Uzbekistan is fragmented, as opposed to coordinated, and oriented towards governance of inputs rather than outputs. This input-oriented governance means that the government is focused on providing TVET schools with direct inputs like learning materials, infrastructure, and teacher salaries. An output-oriented strategy involves providing funding per student (“money follows the student” approach) and allowing providers to self-manage as long as standards are met. Fragmentation and input orientation are not necessarily problems, but the low satisfaction with this governance style and other indicators indicate that the approach is not working well for Uzbekistan.

Finally, the study looked at how actors interact for TVET governance. Ideally, TVET governance is a network with employers and employer associations playing important roles alongside ministries, regional line ministries, and TVET providers. The previous study done by ETH Zurich and Helvetas Uzbekistan in 2021 found that education-employment linkage is very low in the Uzbek TVET sector, and the governance results showed why. While employer associations are typically key intermediaries, Uzbek associations are in their infancy and are outsiders in the governance network for TVET. They have weak relations to employers themselves, and no employer reported a relation to an association. As a consequence, employers are bombarded by requests from other actors and from each other and linkage remains low while all actors in the network find cooperation arduous and unsatisfying.  

Shifting focus to outputs and outcomes

The 2022 study concludes with four recommendations: 

> Shift from input-oriented governance toward output-oriented governance. 

> Prioritize a cooperative governance network in which employer associations are true intermediaries facilitating employer leadership of TVET. 

> Focus on improving career guidance and counseling, system permeability i.e. navigating between different career pathways vertically and horizontally), and clear financing and incentives to improve TVET governance performance.

> Focus on solving fundamental system problems, treating quality as an outcome rather than an input.

Although the study highlights the issue of fragmentation, it does not prioritize that problem in its recommendations. The recommendations instead focus on moving towards output-oriented governance, prioritizing cooperation—especially with employers and associations, improving career guidance, and treating quality as an outcome of solving critical problems rather than a goal in itself. 

The 2023 reforms are intended to combat fragmentation across government, but TVET remains fragmented across ministries. Instead of clearer leadership, TVET providers and employers are left without representation at the highest levels of governance and facing the same complex funding and regulation situation they had before. Although fragmentation was an issue, input-oriented governance was the more pressing issue before the reform. If anything, the reform makes this situation more urgent. TVET providers lack the freedom to manage their institutions and have incentives to maximize spending on infrastructure and equipment without considering effectiveness. An output-oriented system would focus on students’ attainment of standards. This would help stabilize the TVET sector for providers while allowing for innovation, work-based learning, and other much-needed changes.

Since 2020, the Annex 2 exercise, carried out as part of the annual reports of SDC’s operational units, provides a picture of SDC’s Private Sector Engagement (PSE) portfolio. As a modality, PSEs are implemented across all of SDC’s priority topics and they are diverse in terms of objectives and private sector partners. By comparing data from SAP with information entered by operational units, we get an understanding of the universe of PSE projects SDC is engaged in. Last year, the Annex 2 database allowed SDC, for the first time, to report to the OECD on mobilizing private sector funding. Here you can find the latest insights: https://www.shareweb.ch/site/EI/Documents/Topics/Private%20Sector%20Development/Overview%20PSE@SDC%202022-%20Results%20from%20Annex%202.pdf