UNIDO, Swedish development agency and private sector join forces to boost industrial development

VIENNA, 16 November 2012 – How to learn from each other and replicate good experiences in industrial skills development – this was the focus of a two-day, UNIDO-organized Learning and Knowledge Development (LKD) facility workshop that ended in Vienna today.

The event brought together private sector companies, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and representatives of national vocational training centres. It was designed to promote public-private partnership projects on industrial skills development in Africa and other regions of the world.

The LKD facility is an initiative that builds on the successful experiences of previous public-private partnership projects implemented by Sida, UNIDO and various private sector partners, including Volvo, Scania and Festo. These partnerships have established training academies and centres for the operation and maintenance of heavy equipment in the sectors of transport, material handling and agricultural equipment construction.

Taking into account the high potential for the expansion of such projects, the LKD facility is designed to serve as an industrial skills development resource. It will include three interlinked components: a results-based learning and knowledge development system; management training for the heads of vocational training centres and policymakers in order to ensure the long-term sustainability of the initiatives; and a projects development facility to expand good-practice approaches elsewhere.

The LKD facility supports a wider need to document and help develop such partnership initiatives. The outputs of the LKD facility will be shared with the wider community in an effort to foster  a holistic approach to industrial development.

For more information on the LKD facility, please contact:

Virpi Stucki
UNIDO Industrial Development Officer,  Agribusiness Branch
E-mail

For more information on UNIDO, please contact:

Mikhail Evstafyev
UNIDO Advocacy and Communications Coordinator
Telephone: (+43-1) 26026-5021, Mobile: (+43-699) 1459-7329
E-mail