A new competence-based curriculum covering hydro, geothermal, pit, solar, and gas energy extraction and operations will be rolled out in all vocational training institutions in the country by September, the Workforce Development Authority (WDA) has said.

The curriculum is designed to address human resource gaps in energy sector, according to John Bosco Murenzi, the coordinator of the skills development project in energy at WDA.

Murenzi said WDA is currently evaluating a report by a Kenyan-based firm E+L, on the energy skills’ gaps in Rwanda, which will be based on to design a curriculum to address the energy sector gaps.

"The skills development project in the energy sector started after the government identified skills gaps in the sector,” said Murenzi, adding that government secured a grant from African Development Bank (ADB) to initiate the skills development project.

He said the project, which will cost about Rwf600 million, was initially meant to train technical personnel to work on the Kivuwatt methane gas energy project, but government realised the skills gap was in the entire sector, hence expanding the scope.

Kivuwatt project, located in Lake Kivu currently generates, 25 megawatts to the national grid.

Jerome Gasana, the director-general of WDA, said that due to the importance of energy sector in the country’s development agenda, there was need to design relevant education mechanisms to facilitate private sector investment in the sector.

"Energy sector is an important pillar for the country to develop, and the country is calling on the private sector to invest in the sector. With the support of AfDB, we have partnered with E+L to come up with the most relevant curriculum that will avail the country with enough and well-versed energy sector players,” Gasana said.

Besides shortage of enough energy sector professionals in terms of quality and quantity, Rwanda also did not have a coordinated energy curricula for vocational institutions to consider as the national instrument, according WDA’s Murenzi.

"For instance, Tumba College of Technology had its own curriculum, IPRC had a different curriculum and many others, which were not relevant to our situation. We needed to have one tailor-made curricula for the sector to evolve,” Murenzi said.

Nyokabi Njuguna, the chief executive of E+L, said as they traversed the country in their research to identify the key issues in the energy sector, they found out that many operators of energy posts "seemed to have uncoordinated figures of the energy produced, blaming it on low skills.”

"There was no central place to get coordinated numbers, different institutions gave us different numbers. There are a few private sector players in energy academia linkages. Rwanda has a big vision, therefore energy curriculum must consider the big picture of the industry,” Njuguna said.

Gasana said WDA would design curricula for technical secondary schools, vocational and integrated polytechnics.

Murenzi reiterated that there would be refresher course offered to the people already employed in the energy sector, to help them match with the new curricula to be introduced.

He added that the sample curricula could be published and tried in June this year, with hope that curricula rollout in all institutions would come into force by September 2016.

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