Solar Power Helping Eradicate High Youth Unemployment in West Africa

GREEN Solar Academy and Valentin Software have joined forces with Takoradi Technical University in Ghana and KYA-Energy Institute in Togo, with financial backing from Germany’s develoPPP.de fund, to implement expert training and job placement opportunities for future PV engineers.

BTech graduates and final-year students will be offered solid and practical professional PV solar training at the new Solar Training Centres to equip them with the essential skills required to enter the job market on graduation.

A job placement programme follows the completion of this training: every graduate is assured of a 3-week internship with a Solar Hub West Africa company.

The seeds of this collaboration were first planted when Dr. Maame Afua Nkrumah, the Dean of International Programmes and External Linkages Office at Takoradi Technical University, met GREEN Solar Academy at WACEE (West African Clean Energy & Environment Trade Fair & Conference) in 2019.

Dr Nkrumah says, “I realised we had found in GREEN Solar Academy the partner we need to establish solar training at Takoradi Technical University. We are excited to become the first university in Accra with a photovoltaic workshop.”

The first leg of this project involved setting up the practical training centre at Takoradi Technical University, which includes a mock roof with solar systems, installation tools, experimental kits, and access to Valentin’s PV*SOL Software.

The next step was to begin training the university lecturers themselves, which will qualify them to teach the content to students and enable them to use interactive teaching methods. This is known as Training of Trainers (ToT).

The Training of Trainers (ToT) began with the lecturers attending the industry-acclaimed 5-Day SuperSolarSchool at GREEN Solar Academy Ghana, followed by didactical training at the Takoradi University from 26 to 29 April 2021.

Peter Pretorius, a GREEN Solar Academy South Africa trainer, travelled to Ghana to advise on the setup of the training centre, as well as to present some of the modules alongside his colleague Dennis Wiredu Asare from GREEN Solar Academy Ghana.

Development of the course material for the students has already started for a mini-grid course in Togo and customisation of content to suit the current experience level of university attendees and the demands of the local PV industry will follow.

Antje Klauss-Vorreiter, Managing Director of GREEN Solar Academy, explains, “We offer Photovoltaic training in various African countries and encounter the same difficulty in each of them: the youth unemployment rate is enormous yet the PV industry lacks experienced employees.

This pilot project in Ghana will begin to address both of these issues, and we now have a solid framework that can be successfully rolled out to other regions across the continent.”

A total of 240 students will be trained over the course of this two-year project, which was signed into agreement in October 2020, and it is predicted that at least 50% of these will go on to secure permanent employment via the job placement programme.

BACKGROUND:

Energy demands in West Africa are increasing as the region moves towards more local production and processing of resources. From an economical and environmental perspective, the only sustainable way to cover these demands is with renewable energy.

More and more local companies are emerging to meet this need, and they are all desperately seeking skilled employees.

While there are many electrical engineering graduates in Ghana, they lack the solid and practical professional background that will allow them to be hired by solar companies. Youth unemployment remains undesirably high, at more than 30%.

This collaboration connects graduates, who are now suitably skilled, with industry professionals who are themselves alumni of the GREEN Solar Academy.

THE PARTNERS:

GREEN Solar Academy is an independent, 100% female-owned training provider in the solar industry offering training for installers of photovoltaic solar systems in the African countries of South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Togo, Mozambique and Ghana.

GREEN (an acronym for Global Renewable Energy and Efficiency Network) is the African branch of DGS SolarSchool (DGS), and the successor to maxx-solar academy, which was founded in 2011.

Valentin Software develops design and simulation software for energy technology systems. Valentin’s best-selling PV*SOL application has become a standard in the PV Solar industry and is used by engineers, planners and universities. Valentin’s software solutions are multilingual and sold worldwide, with 20 sales and training partners around the globe.

Takoradi Technical University is a public tertiary education institution in Ghana that has recently started to focus on renewable energy. It was one of six polytechnics converted into a fully-fledged university in 2016. The university runs Masters in Technology and Bachelor in Technology Programmes in addition to a Higher National Diploma and other Certificate Programmes and Courses.

KYA-Energy Institute is the training arm of KYA-Energy Group. The institute runs GREEN Solar Academy Togo, the first GREEN Academy established in francophone Africa.

KYA-Energy Group works to meet the challenge of electrification in Africa in a sustainable way through the design, assembly and distribution of standalone energy systems, especially for household applications and productive applications (SMEs and agricultural applications).

develoPPP.de was set up by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) over 20 years ago to foster the involvement of the private sector in areas where business opportunities and development policy initiatives overlap.

To this end, BMZ offers financial and technical support for companies that want to do business or have already begun operating in developing and emerging-market countries. The company is responsible for covering at least half of the overall costs.

More than 2 000 development partnerships have been realised with the private sector in more than 100 countries, with investments of over EUR 1.1 billion in sustainable economic development in sectors such as energy, agriculture, education and health.

Source: engineeringnews