The National Steering Committee on Infrastructure, Transport, Energy, and Light Manufacturing of the World bank funded East African Skills for Transformation and Regional Integration Project made a field visit inspection at Kisumu National Polytechnic

Led by the Chairperson of the National Steering Committee, Dr. Esther Thaara Muoria, the Principal Secretary for Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and accompanied by the Principal Secretary for Roads Eng. Joseph Mbugua, the Committee visited the project being implemented under EASTRIP in order to receive update reports on the status of the project and engage with the stakeholders and local leaders.

The Principal Secretary for Roads represents the Infrastructure and Transport sector in the National Steering Committee, and, under this sector, the Kenya Institute of Highways and Building Technology (KIHBT) is the TVET selected to improve the highways and building technology training programs. The other TVETs include the Meru National Polytechnic and the Coast National Polytechnic under the Ministry of Education and the KENGEN Geothermal Training Center in the Ministry of Energy charged with developing energy related programs.

The project is designed to address the skills shortage and mismatch by providing technical, financial and industry partnerships to improve the relevance and quality of programs in the selected institutions. The project  also supports the development of highly specialized TVET faculty as well as industry recognized short-term training, targeting priority regional priority regional priority sectors in infrastructure, transport, energy and ICT.

The Kisumu National Polytechnic project objectives are to upgrade the TVET into a center of excellence to develop and train programs in Textile Technology. Its components include increasing access to and improving and Strengthening of the quality of TVET programs for high-quality skills development in the Institution, create a national TVET enabling environments, and enhance regional collaboration in TVET and project coordination through supporting regional integration in East Africa.