Zambia - Skills Training for Results and Industry-Valued Employment Project

Overview & Synopsis

The development objective of the Skills Training for Results and Industry-Valued Employment Project for Zambia is to strengthen the skills ecosystem for increased job creation in priority value chains. The project focuses on mining, agribusiness, and hospitality and will operate through three areas of work: building industry-led systems, preparing youth for better jobs, and growing employment opportunities. To build systems, it will establish a Technical Education, Vocational, and Entrepreneurship Training management information system, enhance the Labor Market Information System (LMIS) with real-time vacancy and skills demand analytics, deploy artificial intelligence-powered career guidance, accelerate the development of occupational standards, set up sector skills boards, and reform the national skills financing window to link a share of disbursements to verified employment outcomes. To prepare youth, it will finance competitive grants to upgrade advanced technical programs at Zambia Qualifications Framework Levels 5 and 6 and improve crafts and trades programs, establish Centers of Excellence, expand hybrid learning and structured apprenticeships and internships, pilot need-based student loans through the Higher Education Loans and Scholarships Board (HELSB), and scale short-term skilling through results-based contracts that reward placement into jobs or further education, including targeted support for artisanal and small-scale mining and climate-smart practices. To grow demand, it will provide Business Development Services (BDS) to growth-oriented micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and deliver cluster-based upskilling through business associations to strengthen firm capabilities, productivity, and absorption of trained graduates. The project intends to reach approximately 350,000 beneficiaries, support about 30,000 new graduates at higher technical levels, deliver short-term training to roughly 150,000 youths, enable at least 20,000 verified internships, and help at least 60 percent of participating firms adopt productivity-enhancing practices, while ensuring at least 40 percent female participation and disability-responsive inclusion measures. Climate co-benefits will be achieved through energy-efficient and resilient institutional upgrades and curricula that embed climate-smart agriculture, responsible mining, and sustainable tourism, and digitalization will improve scale, transparency, and matching between skills and jobs. Safeguards for gender-based violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, and sexual harassment will be integrated across training and work-based learning environments.