1. Introduction and Background

Ethiopia is experiencing rapid economic growth. However, this growth is accompanied by significant labour market challenges, with projections indicating approximately 2.2 million new job seekers annually for the next three decades. A critical need exists to equip vocational trainees with practical skills.

The Ethiopian Government, in its 2023 Education and Training Policy, emphasises the importance of effective collaboration between the education sector and private sector to align training with industry needs and bridge the labour market gap. Current private sector involvement in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) lacks a supportive regulatory framework. This deficiency hinders the private sector's role, leading to low employability of vocational graduates and a shortage of skilled workers. Furthermore, TVET trainers often lack practical experience, limiting their ability to provide relevant real-world context. Meaningful private sector engagement necessitates serious consideration of input from companies, chambers, and associations at all levels, beginning with governance.

2. Project Overview: STEP IV

The STEP IV project, funded by the German Government and commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), is implemented by GIZ. Its primary objective is to support the income and employment situation for the Ethiopian population, especially for young people, by demand-oriented training and qualification offers. The German government's support aims to systematically engage the organised private sector, which requires strengthening to effectively advocate for and assume its role in TVET. Fostering public-private dialogue is crucial for building trust and collaboration, ultimately informing the development of a TVET Strategy that ensures private sector involvement in decision-making and implementation.

The STEP IV project actively promotes the involvement of companies in developing and implementing labour market-oriented qualification measures such as cooperative and short- term training programs. Gender equality is a guiding principle integrated across all project interventions.

3. Thematic Areas and Activities

The STEP IV project structures its activities under three interconnected thematic areas

- Regulatory Framework for TVET: promoting reform guidelines translation into practical strategies, implementation plans, legal frameworks, and steering structures.
- Strengthen the Role of the Private Sector: supporting the organised private sector in fulfilling its central role in managing vocational training.
- Align the TVET system with transformation processes: enabling vocational training actors to recognise social (gender) and economic (digitalszation and green TVET) transformation processes and make necessary adjustment

4. Implementation Approach and Key Challenges

The STEP IV project operates at national, regional, and local levels. It provides advisory support to partner institutions to improve trainer training. A core activity involves implementing demand-oriented, private sector-led cooperative and short-term training programs. These programs focus on green, digital, and entrepreneurial skills and target TVET trainees, job seekers, and the informally employed (incl. women and people with disabilities) in selected high-employability economic sectors.

While cooperative and short-term training are integral to Ethiopia's TVET policy, their implementation is often weak due to limited private sector engagement in program design, occupational standard review, and trainee assessment. A key challenge is the effective translation of occupational standards (OS) and Units of Competence (UoC) into functional cooperative trainings. Developing these effective programs requires collaborative involvement from companies, TVET institutions, and federal/regional governments.

The focus of both long-term cooperative training and short-term demand-oriented training measures would be on green, digital and social transformation and entrepreneurial skills with active involvement of the companies. The work packages are as follows, and details are available in the ToR.

WP 1: Establishment of regional and sectoral implementation plans and coordination mechanisms, reflecting cooperation between public and private sector

The aim of WP1 is to engage with all relevant stakeholders/actors from the public and private sector, to set up an implementation structure for all activities within this consultancy.

In implementation of city administrations/regions, the (re)establishment of platforms coordinating the CT and short-term training programme implementation shall be facilitated by the contractor. If suitable, existing forums/platforms shall be used. The contractor is responsible for organising regular exchanges.

The contractor shall secure the engagement of at least 30 influential large companies (champions) to ensure effective implementation of cooperative training and selection of job seekers as well as informally employed people for short-term qualification measures / trainings.

WP 2: (Re)-design and developing cooperative training implementation packages in selected economic sectors

Based on the selected job profiles/occupations and levels, the contractor shall support MoLS, Regional TVT bureaus, ECCSA, sectorial associations, companies and other relevant public and private stakeholders/actors to (re)design and develop Cooperative Training Programmes to TVT college trainees. The Programmes shall significantly contribute to the increased employability of trainees with an in-company training time of at least 70 %. The aim is to define training programmes, covering all relevant aspects from A to Z by incorporating green, digital and social transformation, and entrepreneurial skills for successful training, instead of focusing only on one aspect of a programme. The training programmes should utilise available resources, skills, and knowledge to an optimum. It is crucial that the designed and developed programmes are mainstreamed and serve a broad group of trainees and companies.

In addition to that, the contractor shall carry out a rapid skills gap analysis and set a baseline by identifying the capacity building needs at partner TVT institutions/colleges and companies" level to facilitate the delivery of CT programmes (considering the needs on gender sensitive and inclusive teaching practices).

WP 3: Implementation of cooperative training measures in selected economic sectors

The aim of this work package is for at least 300 trainees (of which 150 women and 20 Persons with Disabilities) to benefit and complete the developed programmes in the cooperative training modalities, where the learning takes place in TVET colleges and the partner companies. An allocation of the total target among the selected sectors will be discussed at the beginning of the consultancy.

While all relevant stakeholders need to be engaged in the implementation, trainees" allotment depends on the selected training fields/sectors and will be agreed upon at a later stage.

WP 4: (Re)-design and developing labour market oriented short-term trainings materials in selected economic sectors

Work package 4 aims to design and develop training materials to provide a range of skills and knowledge gaps based short term training for job seekers and informally employed people, that improves employment prospects. The contractor is expected to focus on the design and development of compressive training packages employment-oriented qualification measures. At least one measure shall be developed for each one of the target groups, namely job seekers and informally self-employed workers, women and persons with disabilities. The focus of the thematic area remains on green, digital and social transformation, entrepreneurial skills including digital entrepreneurship. The number of each target group shall be identified at the beginning of the programme in collaboration with partners and stakeholders.

WP 5: Implementation of labour market oriented short-term training measures in selected economic sectors

Roll-out and implementation of at least four employment qualification measures (short-term training). As mentioned above, the four chosen measures must be implemented together with a partner institution and private sector to ensure sustainability. These partner institutions shall be able to take up the training at the end of the project. To this end, the contractor should not only consider governmental institutions but also private sectors, e.g. private training providers, companies and associations or chambers.
Implementation partners: MoLS, Regional TVET Bureaus, private sector companies and associations, TVET colleges and any other relevant TVET stakeholders.

GIZ may optionally commission contract amendments and/or increases based on the criteria in the tender documents to the successful bidder of this tender. For details, please see the terms of reference.

According to Article 160, Section 3 of the German Act Against Restraint of Competition (GWB), application for review is not permissible insofar as
1. the applicant has identified the claimed infringement of the procurement rules before submitting the application for review and has not submitted a complaint to the contracting authority within a period of 10 calendar days; the expiry of the period pursuant to Article 134, Section 2 remains unaffected,
2. complaints of infringements of procurement rules that are evident in the tender notice are not submitted to the contracting authority at the latest by the expiry of the deadline for the application or by the deadline for the submission of bids, specified in the tender notice.
3. complaints of infringements of procurement rules that first become evident in the tender documents are not submitted to the contracting authority at the latest by the expiry of the deadline for application or by the deadline for the submission of bids,
4. more than 15 calendar days have expired since receipt of notification from the contracting authority that it is unwilling to redress the complaint.
Sentence 1 does not apply in the case of an application to determine the invalidity of the contract in accordance with Article 135, Section 1 (2). Article 134, Section 1, Sentence 2 remains unaffected.

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GIZ asks the applicant or bidder to submit, complete or correct documents, within the framework laid down by law.

The execution conditions result from the information given in the contract notice and the tender documents.