ADDIS ABABA – The strategies are being signed, the frameworks are being launched. In the halls of Africa Skills Week 2025, the continent is drafting its technical future in ink and policy. But in the breakout rooms and audience seats, the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) is working in a different medium: human potential.

This week, FAWE is not just a participant; it is an architect of lived experience. Alongside colleagues from FAWE Ethiopia, the delegation is orchestrating a crucial bridge between high-level policy and ground-level transformation. Their focus: ensuring the Phase II program participants—the very individuals these frameworks are designed to serve—are not mere spectators, but active scribes of their own destinies.

The official launch of the Africa Continental TVET Strategy (2025–2034) by the African Union was more than a milestone; it was the unveiling of a continental blueprint. And FAWE’s cohort was there, not as a passive audience, but as the future flesh and blood of this ambitious skeleton. They witnessed a promise being made to Africa’s youth. Now, FAWE is tasked with ensuring that promise is kept for its women and girls.

The real work, however, unfolded in the deep-dive sessions of the previous day. The theme, “Strengthening Foundations for TVET Development in Africa,” was given tangible form as FAWE engaged in critical dialogues:
In “Scaling Youth Engagement in Agriculture and Nutrition,” they extracted practical lessons, moving farming from a fallback to a frontier of innovation.
Through the lens of “The African Continental Qualifications Framework (ACQF) in Action,” they worked to ensure women’s skills won’t be confined by borders, but will become a portable, recognized currency across the continent.
And in the session on “Empowering Women and Young People with TVETASS,” the focus was on the specific tools and methodologies required to turn vocational training into genuine life transformation.

This is where FAWE’s mission diverges from the conventional. While the continent builds the infrastructure of skills development, FAWE is meticulously writing the code that will ensure women are not just users of the system, but its prime innovators and beneficiaries. They are ensuring that when the foundations of TVET are strengthened, they are built to bear the weight of a woman’s ambition.