MONROVIA – Liberia’s vocational schools are finally teaching on the equipment employers actually use. The €10 million Strengthening Integration through Vocational Education (STRIVE) project is driving the change. At Booker Washington Institute (BWI), hospitality students have moved from charcoal pots to modern kitchens. A single national curriculum is replacing trainer-by-trainer improvisation. Firestone Liberia says it has already hired several STRIVE trainees into its workforce. Yet the harder test lies beyond the classroom. Internships remain short, and many firms assume trainees must be paid. Graduates who start their own businesses struggle to find finance. The project is listed as running through December 2026. Whether its gains survive depends on who maintains them afterward, as THE ANALYST Matthew Turry reports.
Students at Booker Washington Institute (BWI) once trained for hotel kitchens on charcoal pots and wood-fired ovens, even though the hotels they hoped to join cooked with gas and electricity. Instructors say that gap is closing under a €10 million project meant to make Liberia’s vocational graduates employable.
For years, Liberia’s technical and vocational education and training (TVET) challenge has extended beyond classrooms. The harder question is what happens when young people leave: whether training turns into jobs, apprenticeships, viable businesses or the ability to operate modern equipment.
The Strengthening Integration through Vocational Education (STRIVE) project is meant to answer that question. It is funded by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and implemented by the European Institute for Cooperation and Development (IECD).
It aims to strengthen vocational training, improve employability and connect instruction to labor-market needs.
The Development Dashboard of Liberia’s Ministry of Finance and Development Planning lists the project as running through December 2026, with objectives including stronger TVET institutions, better curricula, new equipment and improved training conditions.
A Fragmented System
IECD says it launched STRIVE partly in response to a fragmented system in which institutions used different curricula and certification approaches. Based on a Liberian needs assessment, support focuses on four areas: electricity, hospitality, masonry and agriculture. The project initially targeted nine centers and 2,000 young people.
George K. Fredericks, Associate Coordinator of the Medical Science Department at BWI, which includes Hospitality, said the project has changed how teaching is done.
“STRIVE is a project that came in various dimensions,” Fredericks said. “We did training of trainers, which was centered on the curriculum. They taught us and trained us about the new curriculum that will be used by all TVET institutions around the Republic of Liberia.”
He said the standardized curriculum ends an era in which each trainer taught what he or she knew. “It is making a significant difference,” Fredericks said.
Without a common curriculum, he said, “the trainers were training according to what he or she knows,” which “created a lot of problems.” Under the new approach, he said, teaching is “student centered,” and roughly 80 percent of training is hands-on.
From Charcoal to Industry Standard
The change is most visible in hospitality. Fredericks recalled that students once cooked with charcoal pots and manual ovens fired by wood or charcoal, until IECD supplied new equipment.
“When you go to the industry, those leading hotels, you don’t find those traditional things there,” he said. With the new equipment, he said, graduates enter the job market already familiar with the tools of the trade. “They already know how to operate a machine as compared to before,” Fredericks said.
In April 2026, 40 TVET staff graduated from STRIVE-supported training at BWI, and newly equipped masonry and hospitality workshops were handed over. The project has also supported renovation and equipping at BWI, Monrovia Vocational Training Center (MVTC), Maryann Cheeseman Vocational School, LOIC Monrovia and LOIC Buchanan, along with curriculum development and internships.
The Employer View
At Firestone Liberia, Electrical Services Manager Alpha M. Jallo said the company’s partnership with IECD dates to 2023 and includes curriculum development, internships and industrial visits. Jallo said the biggest weakness he sees is not confined to vocational schools. “From our experience with students who have had from various institutions, not only locally, but from universities and vocational schools, the gap is mainly students not being given enough time of internship programs for industrial areas,” he said.
That, he argued, is why employers belong in curriculum design. “It is important that institutions, like the industrial area, be part of the curriculum development programs, because they are dealing with the actual things on the ground,” Jallo said.
Firestone recently hosted about 30 students from IECD-supported institutions at its production lines and power-generation facilities. “We bring them into our facilities, carry them to our production line, our power generation units, for the students to see what we do on the ground, what the workforce does,” he said.
The company also uses such contact to recruit. “We pinpoint these kinds of students and then try to incorporate them into our workforce, meaning getting them into our employment programs,” Jallo said. “With the STRIVE program, a lot of students have been participating in our on-the-job training. We have employed several of them into our workforce.”
Hurdles Remain
Fredericks said one obstacle is employers’ attitude toward internships. Many industries, he said, assume that trained students must be paid when they come for job training.
“The major problem will be how to engage these industries to make sure that these students can be absorbed, but it’s not money,” he said. “It’s the learning aspect of the students.”
He said BWI graduates are finding opportunities in hospitals and hotels in Monrovia, Gbarnga, Ganta and Sanniquellie, while some establish their own businesses, though entrepreneurship remains constrained by finance. Fredericks also asked that STRIVE extend to instructors. “I would also like if the STRIVE program can include the instructors to visit major industrial areas to expose them more,” he said.
Above all, he called for awareness among employers. “We need more awareness,” he said. “Once you do the awareness, most of our students will be absorbed.”
After the Project
Fredericks warned against treating the project’s conclusion as the end of the need for support. “A project should not go far from being over. We still need the support because it’s almost like you go and build a three-story house and you never think about maintenance,” he said.
For AFD, STRIVE responds to youth employment through vocational training. For IECD, the focus includes TVET stakeholders, employability and economic opportunities. The broader objective is a bridge between what Liberia teaches and what its economy needs, and whether it holds may depend on training centers, government, development partners and employers keeping skills relevant after graduation.