Analysing the Labour Outcomes of TVET in Ethiopia : Implication of Challenges and Opportunities in Productive Self-employment of TVET Graduates

The education and training policies of the Ethiopia rests on a simplified pre-sumption that to produce more skilled credentials is the same as to produce more human capital. This policy rhetoric is saying that increasing human capi-tal serves individuals and societies as a straight route to economic develop-ment, since the production system of the country is labour-intensive. The driv-ing goal of the national TEVT strategy of Ethiopia (2008) is to strengthen the culture of self-employment and support job creation in the economy through the expansion TVET. Regardless of this, the Urban Employment Unemploy-ment Survey (UEUS) shows that TEVT graduates become government wage employees. Therefore, in this paper, I concentrate on analysing the gap be-tween the human capital ideologies characterized in the current labour market rhetoric and the everyday realities of human capital risk faced by TVET gradu-ates in their self-employment endeavours. I discuss various factors such as socio-cultural, support service mechanisms, personality traits and government actions and policies which affect TVET graduates undertakings in self-employment.