One of the key interventions of the East Africa Skills for Transformation and Regional Integration Project (EASTRIP) in the Regional Flagship TVET Institutes is to establish and institutionalize institute-industry linkage.

At Dire Dawa Polytechnic College, EASTRIP has impacted the college in developing strong partnerships with industries. This has resulted in access to expensive training materials support from industry.

So far, Dire Dawa Polytechnic College has signed MoUs and established a strong linkage with more than 15 industries and institutes. This established linkage is described as being so strong that it started impacting the institute positively in different aspects. Since the beginning of EASTRIP implementation, the activities related to partnership establishment with industries have shown significant impact.

Among the industries with whom the college has a memorandum of understanding, the Dire Dawa – Dewele Railway Company is highlighted as one industry where a particularly strong linkage has been established. Due to the project intervention, the linkage with this industry upgraded from just teachers’ industrial attachment and students’ cooperative training to staff exchanges and training materials support.

One of the Railway equipment at Dire Dawa Polytechnic College

Specifically, this year, the railway industry supported the institute with a lot of training materials. These materials are described as being too expensive to procure with the budget allocated by the project. The training materials supported by this industry include 1 Locomotive, 200 Track Rail Sleepers, 22 Rails, 2 bogies, and others. These donated materials have an estimated cost of more than 300,000 US dollars. Besides the materials support, the industry has also agreed to assign technical experts for the railway line construction and installation in the college.

By Mesay Tilahun, EASTRIP Project M&E Specialist at Dire Dawa, Polytechnic College