INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION
DEVELOPMENT 
WITH A
FOCUS ON WOMEN IN TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN TANZANIA

Cathleen M. Sekwao
Dar es Salaam Technical College
P.0. Box 2958
Dar es Salaam, TANZANIA


ABSTRACT

The Commonwealth Association of Polytechnics in Africa (CAPA) launched the
Women in Technical Education (WITED) project in 1988 as regional project for
promoting the integration of women in Technical Education, vocational training and
related careers. A remarkable positive response has been recorded so far.

However, it is a waste of resources to train women in such an area which is crucial to
sustainable development, if they are not utilised to the best of their ability. Research
findings of the WITED project, among other things, revealed that given choice, some
employers would employ a man rather than a woman with similar qualifications.
Women's employment problems have been compounded by the structural adjustment
programme.

The present polytechnic education system in Tanzania, as in many African
institutions, aims at producing technically qualified graduates for wage employment
in the formal sector. The dwindling employment opportunities in this sector has
become a major concern in many African countries including Tanzania. Hence CAPA
set about the task of assisting its member institutions develop the capacity for
incorporating Entrepreneurship Development Education (EDE) into their curricula.

The objective of this paper is to highlight the strategies that Tanzania CAPA member
institutions have taken in reaching curricular reforms that would equip their
graduates with motivation and entrepreneurial skills for self employment as an
intervention that women in Technical Education will benefit most.


INTRODUCTION

The Commonwealth Association of Polytechnics in Africa (CAPA) is a
non-governmental network of Polytechnics which was formed in 1978 at the initiative
of the commonwealth Secretariat. Tanzania has twenty CAPA member institutions.

CAPA'S activities have been centred mainly on complementary areas of professional
development and management development. This has been done and is still being
done for the purpose of improving the participants' managerial and training skills
and capabilities and hence improving the quality of technical education in general.

In 1988 CAPA broadened its scope of activities to include "The Women in Technical
Education (WITED) Project" and "The Entrepreneurship Development Education
(EDE) Project".

The WITED project represents CAPA's effort to enhance the participation and role
of women in technical education in commonwealth African Countries. During phase
one of the project, a series of activities were directed at collecting data on the factors
responsible for the low level of participation of women in Technical education
programmes and technical professions.  WITED phase II,  which stated in 1991,
included the actual activities geared towards increasing the number of girls in
Polytechnics. So for the response has been positive.

The EDE programme was launched in 1988 so as to incorporate Entrepreneurship
and self employment training in polytechnics in commonwealth Africa.


WHY EDE?

There has been a global realisation that entrepreneurial capabilities are a critical
vehicle for economic development. For an economy to develop there is the need to
supply more entrepreneurs. They are agents of change, they introduce new methods
of production and new products into an economy. They are innovative. Recent
findings have shown that entrepreneurial capabilities can also be developed by well
structured educational and training programmes (Patel, 1992). India could be
described as the most successful country in the third world that has institutionalized
Entrepreneurship Development programme (EDP). Entrepreneurship has been
incorporated in the curricular of industrial training institutes, polytechnics, colleges of
engineering and some universities in India (Patel 1992). Graduates from such
institutions undergo entrepreneurship training in addition to their various fields of
specialisation.


RATIONALE FOR INSTITUTIONALIZING EDE IN POLYTECHNICS IN
TANZANIA 

The present polytechnic system in Tanzania aims at producing technically qualified
graduates for wage employment in the formal sector. Unemployment of graduates
from our training institutions and many others has become a major national problem
today. This problem is even worse for women graduates who normally encounter
difficulties in getting employment compared to their male folks. (Sekwao, 1990). For
the lucky ones, the period between graduation and employment dates has continued
to lengthen and frustration to mount. The redundancy exercise taking place in the
civil service and parastatal organisations in the country has made employment
opportunities for polytechnic graduates worse. It is obvious then that the polytechnic
graduate must seek self employment as the only viable option particularly for the
female polytechnic graduate.
A number of obstacles do however stand in the way of self employment, more so for
female graduates than for their male counterparts. High among these are:-

	(i)	lack of a conducive environment and
	(ii)	access to the start - up capital.

But even if it was possible to create the necessary investment climate and provide
access to the necessary capital, our Polytechnic graduates especially women, lack the
confidence needed to set up their own small scale enterprises and assume an
entrepreneurial role using the professional skills they have. This problem has created
a serious challenge to the educators in that they have to develop curricula that will
accommodate such changes and needs, hence the phasing in of EDE in the
Polytechnic curricula. This will infuse elements like innovations, creativity, risk taking
foresight and persistence. The overall result will be having curricula with two types of
objectives, i.e. job oriented and self-employment oriented objectives. This will enable
the polytechnic graduates, to be job creators instead of being sorely job seekers. The
curriculum is for both males and females but it is believed that females will benefit
most.


WHO IS AN  ENTREPRENEUR?

Entrepreneurship is a creative activity and the entrepreneur is therefore an innovator.
In other terms, entrepreneurship is a creative and innovative response to the
environment. Such responses result in the introduction of new products or services
into the economy or in the improvement of existing methods of providing products or
services. Research studies indicate that countries that have experienced rapid
economic growth have always had a large number of adventurous and enterprising
people.

In a summary form, an entrepreneur is simply a person who performs the following:

	(i)   Scans his/her business environment
	(ii)  Identifies a business opportunity
	(iii) Organizes his/her resources and launches his/her business enterprise
	(iv)  Manages his/her business enterprise with a principal motive of
			making profit.


WHAT IS REQUIRED NOW?

Social institutions and polytechnics have tended to popularise wage employment
inclinations.  They encourage such anti-entrepreneurial behaviour as conformity and
compliance while simultaneously suppressing entrepreneurial behaviour such as
creativity, risk taking, independence perseverance, etc. Many business management
programmes being conducted are geared mainly towards producing manpower for
existing enterprises. They have little bearing on the creation of an entrepreneurial
culture. Such tendencies can only be changed through systematic and well planned
training efforts.

The training should aim at initiating and accelerating the process of entrepreneurship
development through inculcating an entrepreneurial culture. The actual training,
however will require the commitment of:
	(i)  the entrepreneur to be on one hand (student), and
	(ii) the promoters of entrepreneurship, mainly the trainers.

To obtain the required results in the training activities, attention must also be paid to
the development of an environment where entrepreneurial activities can flourish and
grow.


OBJECTIVES:

Primary objectives for Entrepreneurship Education Programme in our polytechnics
are to:
	(i)   Develop and strengthen the capacities of our polytechnics to provide
students with appropriate training in small scale enterprise development.
(ii)  Provide polytechnic students in addition to normal technical skills also
the attitude of self-reliance and the capacity for engaging in responsible
entrepreneurial activities for self employment and
(iii) Contribute in the long-term arresting the present trend of growing
unemployment.


TANZANIA CAPA MEMBER INSTITUTIONS' STRATEGIES IN
INSTITUTIONALISING EDE

Since the launching of the Entrepreneurship Education Programme by CAPA in 1988,
activities in Tanzania CAPA member institutions have focused on sensitising policy
makers in and outside the Polytechnics and  on capacity building for entrepreneurial
education and training within the institutions and these have been as follows:

(a)	November, 1988 - February 1989:
	A twelve week programme conducted at the Entrepreneurship Development
Institute of India, Ahmedabad, at which 18 CAPA Regional Resource Persons in
Entrepreneurship Education were trained. Participants were polytechnic lecturers
from 11 countries and the programme was funded under CITEP. Two
participants were from Tanzania.

(b)	November to December 1991: 
A 4 week Entrepreneurship Education training of Trainers Workshop was held at
MEDI, Mponela, Malawi for 29 polytechnic lecturers from 9 countries including
Mozambique. The programme was funded by CFTC and Commonwealth
Foundation. Tanzania was represented by 4 polytechnic lecturers.

In addition to the above regional training activities, five country level
Entrepreneurship Education workshops have been conducted as follows:
(i)	October 1990: 
A 5 day Awareness Entrepreneurship Education Workshop was conducted at
Arusha Technical College, Tanzania, for participants from 20 Tanzania CAPA
member colleges. The programme was funded by participating institutions and
organizations. CAPA provided two external resource persons.

(ii)	June 1993: 
	A 5 day principals' awareness workshop on gender equity and
Entrepreneurship Development Education (EDE) was held at IDM Mzumbe,
Tanzania for 12 participants from 10 CAPA member institutions in Tanzania
and Ministry officials. All resource persons were Tanzanians. Funding came from
Tanzania government through various ministries.

(iii)	November/December 1993: A 4 week EDE Training of Trainers (TOT)
national workshop was held in Arusha for 19 participants from 9 Tanzania
CAPA member institutions and ministry officials. CAPA Secretariat provided
and funded two external resource persons from Kenya and Zambia CAPA
member institutions to support the three Tanzanian resource persons. The
workshop was  funded by the Tanzania government through various ministries.

(iv)	June 1994: 
	A 5 day national EDE curriculum preparation workshop was held in Moshi.
It was attended by 12 participants from 10 CAPA member institutions in
Tanzania and one ministry official. The resource persons were from  Tanzania (3)
and Kenya (1). The workshop was fully funded by the Tanzania government
through the respective ministries.

(v)	23rd March - 18th April, 1995 - 
A 2 week workshop was held to prepare the EDE trainers manual. This was the
next logical step before the implementation of the EDE programme in Tanzania
CAPA member institutions. The fifteen participants of this workshop were
mostly those who took part in the previous EDE workshops mentioned above.
USAID funded this workshop as well as the production of the EDE trainers
manual.


WHAT ARE THE EXPECTED OUTCOMES?

The EDE programme is expected to start during the next academic year. It will take
some years before the expected results are observed such as:
	(i)   Increasing the supply of competent small scale entrepreneurs especially
		  women thus reducing incidences of business failure in the country.
	(ii)  Strengthening the country's industrialisation base (stabilising business
		  linkages/interdependence) and promoting competition.
	(iii) Promoting growth and diversification of small scale enterprises into
medium and large scale enterprises.
	(iv)  Creation of employment opportunities.


IMPLICATIONS OF EDE PROGRAMME ON WOMEN IN TECHNICAL
EDUCATION

Women's NGOs in science and technology, such as GASAT, and even governments
have realised the low level of participation of women in science and technology and
the danger that goes with it in the development process. They are all struggling to
enhance and diversify the participation of women in science and technology. Their
struggle has started bearing fruit. More women are now entering the various fields of
science and technology than before although not to a satisfactory level.

Taking into consideration that:
	(i)   most women are said to lack confidence
	(ii)  those in the professions of science and technology are said to be trading 
		on men's domain
	(iii)  women are less preferred by employers than men
	(iv)  in the present situations of unemployment, adjustment and restructuring
		 women are affected more than men
	
Therefore there is a specific and urgent cause for concern for the women we are
encouraging to join scientific and technological professions lest them be frustrated in
the end. I consider the EDE programme to be a good strategy for alleviating the
unemployment problem of graduates in technical education, especially women. Do
you have another strategy?.

REFERENCES

1.	Patel V.G. 1992
	Keynote address given at a CAPA Policy Mahers' conference on Gender
Equity and Institutionalisation of Entrepreneurship Education held in Dar es
Salaam Tanzania.

2.	Sekwao C.M. (1990)
	Women in Technical Education, Training and Jobs. Africa: Eastern Regional
Report. ILO Training discussion papers No. 54.