Transnational Skills Partnerships between Ghana and Germany: A “triple-win” solution?

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Introduction

by Stefan Rother, Susanne Schultz and Mary B. Setrana

In 2015, the Valletta summit action plan recommended to “develop networks between European and African vocational training institutions, with a view to ensuring that vocational training matches labour market needs”. The EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum, moreover, proposes “talent partnerships” as a solution to match labour and skills needs in EU Member States with the relevant institutions in key countries of origin to eventually  support mobility and migration schemes for labour and training purposes.

World leaders at the 2015 Valletta Summit. Photo by the European External Action Service via Flickr

Transnational Mobility and Skill Partnerships (TMSP) that contribute to fair migration have been high on the migration policy agenda for several years now. The conceptual groundwork, first laid out by the economist Michael Clemens, has been widely discussed, and the adoption of the Global Compact for safe, orderly and regular migration (GCM) has brought further attention to the issue. Objective 18e of the GCM explicitly commits to: “Build global skills partnerships among countries that strengthen training capacities of national authorities and relevant stakeholders, including the private sector and trade unions, and foster skills development of workers in countries of origin and migrants in countries of destination with a view to preparing trainees for employability in the labour markets of all participating countries”.

However, these high aspirations have not resulted in many concrete projects, much less larger scale approaches. The focus of the few existing partnerships so far have been mostly on nurse training and employment, with some promising programs – such as the German GIZ Triple-Win-Program – supporting their fair recruitment from countries such as the Philippines and Tunisia . Beyond nursing, the GIZ started a German-Moroccan Partnership for the Training and Recruitment of Skilled Workers in 2019, which seems to work with some success. Moreover, a number of small pilot projects on “Legal skilled migration”, Nigeria with Lithuania, Morocco with Belgium and Spain; as well as Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt with France,  have been launched under the Mobility Partnership Facility, providing first lessons learned. What is still missing, though, are firstly, a broadening of programmes to include further sectors of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and employment; and secondly, an implementation of programmes that benefit all sides. To push this discussion forward, we have conducted two exploratory studies proposing a project which works towards a partnership that could support the migration of construction workers between Ghana and the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), as a joint development of skilled workers taking the benefit of all sides into consideration.

Transnational Mobility Skill Partnerships (TMSP)

Photo by Mary Setrana

There are different forms of multi-stakeholder TMSP. The most ambitious and complex approach (Type 3) is based on investment in the educational sector of the country of origin and seeks to establish a two-track programme. Students can choose between the home track, where they receive training for the domestic labour market, and the abroad track, which qualifies them for labour migration to a specific destination country. This approach promises to relieve the country of origin of the cost of training of the workers who leave the country, while still being cost effective for the destination country. Such “Type 3” transnational qualifications and mobility partnerships (Azahaf 2020) have not been put into practice yet, not least as it requires an integrated approach of multiple stakeholders and the long-term investment needed to build up trust, and develop convincing and sustainable business models. One major hindrance so far has been the gap between the skills training systems of the country of origin and the requirements of the country of destination. More common are partnerships where training received in the country of origin is “adjusted” in the country of destination (Type 1); and partnerships where migrants acquire language skills in their country of origin while the vocational training takes place in accordance with the specific standards and regulations in the country of destination (Type 2). The Head of Monitoring and Evaluation, NVTI-Ghana, summarises the interest of his organisation in these kinds of transnational partnerships this way:

“Training could be done in Ghana before students leave Ghana or training could be done when they arrive in Germany. We can also identify specific institutions that can incorporate German language into their system”

Head of Monitoring and Evaluation, National Vocational Training Institute, Ghana, Dec 2020

Why Ghana?

Photo by Mary Setrana

Ghana is considered to be a particularly suited partner country due to its young workforce, democratic and economic stability as well as high regard for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). So far, the construction sector is much more developed compared to other TVET measures for a transnational skill partnership. Meanwhile, it is highly informalized due to low levels of education, which increases the unemployment of skilled workers. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a decrease in employment by government projects, which used to be the biggest employer of construction workers in the country. This recent downturn is coupled with the debt-stricken nature of the construction industry: contractors are not paid for long-lasting projects by the government, rendering contractors unable to fund their projects, which results in a decrease in the amount the government spends on infrastructure while the cost of construction increases. These gaps in the construction sector could be addressed through a global skill partnership: training and upgrading skills that could contribute to the industrial sector of Ghana and of other countries as well. To this end, all the relevant stakeholders such as the Ghanaian National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI), the Council for Technical and Vocation Education Training (COTVET) and other technical institutes) engaged in the exploratory study in Ghana expressed the willingness to collaborate with Germany.

Country/region of destination perspective

In Germany, Federal States adopted the first resolution of their development policy commitment as early as 1962, affirming cooperation with African states and cities in 2017. The partnership between the Federal State of North-Rheine Westphalia and Ghana since 2007 strategically ties up with a multiplicity of pre-existing civil society initiatives with a focus on sustainable development, including transnational projects on skills training and exchange.

Photo by Mary Setrana

The construction sector in Germany has barely suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic. On the contrary, it is to be expected that the already omnipresent lack of skilled workers at all levels (KOFA, 2021) is likely to increase due to an aging workforce. Employers have already shown a significant openness towards recruiting foreign workers, offering skilled training for interested and engaged young persons, including people coming from Sub-Saharan Africa. Some construction companies have expressed high satisfaction and good experiences with workers with a refugee background in Germany in that respect. This need for skilled personnel in the construction sector has barely been addressed in the debate on skilled migration, but the sector seems ready for developing transnational skills partnerships. Since March 2020, the Immigration Act for Skilled Workers (Fachkräfteeinwanderungsgesetz – FEG) facilitates legally entering Germany for skills training, which should make such initiatives easier to implement.    

Recommendations for a skills partnership

Based on our exploratory studies, we propose a type of skills partnership, where training is split between countries of origin and destination. In this “Type 2.5” approach, some fundamental skills (for example the equivalent to a German Bauhelfer, or construction assistant) could be taught in Ghana along with German language training embedded within the local TVET system, with the potential to access further specific training after migration to Germany. In a first step, training would likely be implemented as a full dual-vocational -training according to German standards following a preparatory year, with prospectively acknowledging further skills obtained in the country of origin. Drop-outs during the phase in Ghana would ideally continue their skills training in the TVET system with a sustainable job perspective in the local labour market. If participants in Germany decide to leave the programme, they would have acquired skills useful in the Ghanaian context. This “Type 2.5” approach could easily be integrated into the curriculum of the Ghanaian National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI) or other training institutes such as the Accra Technical Training Institute (ATTC). German language training would be provided by established German institutions in Ghana. 

“we are confident that our students can easily fit into the German market, we are willing to provide German specific upgraded skills to our students”

 Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) Representative, 2020

Photo by Mary Setrana

Our exploratory studies have also shown that there is significant will among stakeholders in Ghana and interest on both the German and Ghana sides. This is an essential condition for establishing a pilot project – the other one is obviously money, not least for ensuring a sustainable systemic implementation on the longer run. In the spirit of a transnational skills partnership, the training in Ghana needs to be financed at least partially by the destination country. This could be situated within the existing development cooperation as a case of “training the trainers”. Within the Type 2.5 approach, one could furthermore envision a public-private partnership for making a sound business case, which could be beneficial for all sides. The Ghanaian Business Association and the Delegation of German Industry and Commerce in Ghana (AHK Ghana) are relevant stakeholders in this regard. Existing German businesses in Ghana would be the longer-term financers, providing opportunities to students for gathering practical experiences and benefit from potential in-country employment in both countries.

We propose to work towards a type of partnership that aims to exploit development potentials for the country of origin, while the country of destination would benefit from the supply of skilled labour and the migrants themselves would benefit from (up)skilling and remittances. This model could provide the Technical and Vocation Education Training sector with further development in terms of standards, employability and balancing practical and theoretical aspects of formal education.

About the authors

Stefan Rother is senor research and lecturer at the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute at the University of Freiburg. His research focus is on migration governance, social movements and migration and democracy. In 2019, he was convener of the International Fellow Group (IFG) at the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) at the University of Ghana.

Susanne Schultz is a Project Manager of “Making Fair Migration a Reality” at the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a German Think tank. She holds a PhD in Return Migration and West Africa and is an Associated Research Fellow at the Center on Migration, Citizenship and Development (COMCAD) at Bielefeld University.

Mary Setrana is senior lecturer at the Centre for Migration Studies, University of Ghana. Her research focus is on Gender and Migration, Return Migration and Reintegration, Migration Governance, Transnational Migration and Diaspora’s. In 2019, Mary was a fellow at the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) at the University of Ghana.

Africa at the gates: Europe’s lose-lose migration management plan

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Cover photo by Irish Defense Forces.

by Loren B Landau and Iriann Freemantle

Europe has not been this scared of Africans since Hannibal drove his war elephants over the Pyrenees. Since the summer of 2015, the question of how to stem the flows from Africa and the Middle East is at the centre of increasingly existential debates about the very future of Europe. Mobilising the full portfolio of its hard and soft powers, Europe is flexing its enforcement muscle to reach deep into the African continent. Working together with African political elites, the results will be reconfigured politics, norms and conceptions of rights north and south of the Mediterranean. This will worsen Africans’ ability to cope with climate change, economic precarity, and other challenges by heightening oppression and limiting resilience. In the process, it will lessen Europe’s moral standing and the strength of its union.

Ministerial meeting on Libya (16 May 2016). Photo by European External Action Service.

Following the 2015 ‘migration crisis’, Europe has launched a series of extraordinary initiatives to stem the ‘migrant tide’. Most famous is its billion Euro Turkey deal. But even more elaborate and expensive are collaborations with governments (or those that claim to be) across North Africa to build African-based detention centres to hold would-be migrants. That is just one of many steps. Europe is also working hard to prevent migrants from ever even reaching the sea. To achieve this, Europe is empowering military regimes with undeniable disregard for human rights such as Omar Al Bashir’s Sudan. To themselves and the world, European leaders justify these actions with an elaborate apparatus of technocratic explanations about the universal benefits of ‘orderly’ migration. Intermittently, they also deliver low blows such as alleging that the discarded clothes of migrants pose a public health risk.

It dedicates billions of Euros to collecting migration data and improving border security. While the EU indefatigably assures us that these interventions will make migration ‘safer and better managed’, the primary goal is, undoubtedly, to limit movement northward. Yet global inequalities mean people will continue to move. And when they do so, European interventions make migrants far more violable, not safer. A few years ago, Pope Francis already called the Mediterranean ‘a vast cemetery’. In 2018 alone, more than 2100 people have died or are missingwhile attempting to cross the sea.

Whichever way it is looked at, not ‘managing’ migration is presented as a lose-lose scenario. Recognising the expense and limits of fortification alone, Europe now supports a growing range of initiatives intended to address ‘root causes’. The idea, as an agreement hashed out at a summit in Brussels in June 2018 put it, is to generate ‘substantial socio-economic transformation’. This includes tackling endemic poverty and fertility rates that outstrip African labour markets’ capacity to absorb. Taken together, these initiatives intend to bring about something that might best be characterised as ‘containment development.’ Under this rubric, developmental success becomes less about promoting human development as an end in itself. Instead, development becomes a means to prevent mobility.

Taken together, these initiatives intend to bring about something that might best be characterised as ‘containment development’

Some of what is envisaged by containment development initiatives – such as support for vocational training, reproductive health facilities, and other economic enterprise – will undoubtedly have positive effects on African lives. However, the approach also has multiple flaws that, if not addressed, will ultimately harm Africans and do little to ‘protect’ Europe from the perceived security and other threats migrants pose.

The first flaw is a fundamental misreading of African demography and the possibilities of creating the jobs needed to absorb surplus labour. Second, such approaches underestimate the potential of migration to be a mitigating effect against both economic and environmental precarity. Indicative of Europe’s containment development plans, the recently published German Marshall plan with Africa, thus argues that ‘it is vital that Africa’s young people can see a future for themselves in Africa.’ Third, by seeking to fragment African economic development into national rather than continental (or even global) supply chains and labour markets, people will be trapped in areas that are economically unviable. This will not only mean sustained poverty, but also intensify practices that further denude agricultural lands and forests. In either case, as is well documented, development is more likely to spur migration than stem it. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, these plans ignore what is perhaps the most important limit on African development and human security: the state itself. The confinement of migrants to the status of ‘irregularity’ in the de facto absence of legal migration avenues is the singularly most significant obstacle to migrants’ safety and productivity.

The confinement of migrants to the status of ‘irregularity’ in the de facto absence of legal migration avenues is the singularly most significant obstacle to migrants’ safety and productivity

So far, European approaches have not worked, at least not in the way they are officially supposed to. Africans have not stopped coming. The ‘Turkey Deal’ has been more ‘successful’, in large part because of Turkey’s institutional capacity and the distance between its borders with Syria and the EU. By supporting police and militaries to close trans-Saharan migration routes, Europe is effectively bisecting the continent into north and south, putting a heavily militarized border across an invisible line that was previously permeable and largely unregulated. Yet if the United States’ experience on the Mexican border is anything to go by, enhanced border controls have limited effect on the numbers of people moving. Instead, they tend to generate increasingly elaborate mechanisms to subvert such controls.


Austrian chancellor (then minister) Sebastian Kurz attends the simulation of a border control mission on a FRONTEX vessel (24 March 2017). Photo by Dragon Tatic, Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration und Äußeres.

And this is what we already see. Across the Mediterranean, militarized borders have set off a kind of arms race between states and smugglers, with increasing collusion between the two. The Libyan slave marketsare the most notorious of examples, but within Sudan, Niger and elsewhere state and state-like authorities are forming profitable smuggling partnerships. The European military and security industryas well as international organisations implementing the EU’s migration management agenda benefit from ongoing ‘irregular’ migration and the threat supposedly emanating from it. Not only do they benefit, in more than one way they actively contribute to sustaining the ‘migration crisis’.

Throughout all this, Europe claims that its approach to governing migration is fundamentally ‘migrant-centred’and its relationship with Africa ‘characterised by equality and the pursuit of common objectives’.But Africans clearly don’t buy into the idea that their continent is about to brim with new opportunities or that Europe is working on their behalf. Indeed, Europe’s policies are almost entirely self-serving, adding to a long and appalling track record of Europeans furthering their interests under the guise of helping poor Africans. Europeans have previously found ways to justify abducting and enslaving Africans as the rescue of their heathen souls. Today, Europe pushes Africans out and back in the name of Africa’s development and progress. Tragically, European efforts to limit African mobility through coercion and containment development will ultimately save neither continent but only threaten lives in both Africa and Europe. That this is done with African leaders’ complicity truly makes this a lose-lose scenario.

About the authors

Loren B Landau is the South African Research Chair in Human Mobility and the Politics of Difference based at the University of the Witwatersrand’s African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS). A publically engaged scholar, his interdisciplinary work explores human mobility, community, and socio-political transformation.

Iriann Freemantle is an Associate Researcher with the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Over the past decade, Iriann has worked extensively on migration, xenophobia and social cohesion in South Africa. Her current work focuses on the role of the European Union and international organisations in the governance of mobility in Africa.

Recent publications

L.B. Landau. 2019. ‘A Chronotope of Containment Development: Europe’s Migrant Crisis and Africa’s Reterritorialization,’ Antipode 51(1):169-186. 

L.B. Landau and C.W. Kihato. 2019. ‘The Future of Mobility and Migration Within and From Sub-Saharan Africa,’ Foresight Reflection Paper. Brussels: European Policy Analysis and Strategy System.