Investments in Agricultural Vocational Training in the Sudan:
Modelling Gender and Child Labour Issues
a. General description of your proposed research (max 500 words)
Since the succession of the South Sudan in 2011, agriculture is deemed an appropriate remedy for improving economic growth and alleviating poverty in the Sudan. However, the sector has faced the significant numerous challenges that constrain its output levels, including climate change conditions, inefficient irrigation infrastructure, erroneous agricultural practices and inconsistent agricultural policies. Furthermore, the sector has suffered from high emigration rates of the skilled youth people to urban areas or abroad (Daoud el a., 2017), resulting in increasing the participation rates of child labour – who aged less than 15 years – in the agricultural activities.
Moreover, the majority of the agricultural workers are engaged in subsistence agriculture instead of production for markets. Among the significant reasons for this is the majority of the agricultural workers are women and youth with low skill levels. The productivity of this vulnerable group is constrained by a lack of appropriate skills training, leading them to vulnerable to a range of economic and environmental changes. The low education and training levels exclude these workers from the knowledge that would enhance their productivity levels and income. In addition, it leads to constrain the process of innovation, adoption, and transformation in agriculture.
Vocational training (VT) is one of the essential determinants of economic and social development. It plays a valuable role in preparing people regardless their age to enter the jobs markets, by improving their skill capacities to be more relevant to the demands of the workforce. Furthermore, several empirical evidences emphasized the effective and crucial role of the VT in declining inequality wages gaps and unemployment rates amongst the workers (Ahmed, 2016; Bellakhal and Mahjoub, 2015; Eichhorst et al., 2012). It provides opportunities for the poor rural people to generate profitable income activities (Walker and Hofstetter, 2016). Consequently, a significant return of interest on VT system has been grown amongst the international policy community under the status of the academic debate. The VT has been become an essential part of the development strategies, especially in the developing countries. The foundation of these strategies is to upgrade the quality system by increasing the VT investment and implementing the successful VT approaches.
In the Sudan, the quality of the VT available in rural areas lags behind the quality of urban areas. This quality relies on several factors such as the availability of training centres, the qualifications of teachers and their proficiency and the availability of training materials. Furthermore, more than 70% of the VT institutions are located in the Khartoum – capital of Sudan- and the rest is distributed across the country. Despite the remarkable benefits of the agricultural VT, the majority of the training programs that provided in its institutions are mainly related to manufacturing and services activities. Nevertheless, the VT systems have suffered from inadequate finance, which seriously affected the quality of training delivery. It’s also failed to meet the requirements of the labour market, because of non-updating trade test, lack of learning materials and technologies constraints.
b. Briefly state your main research questions or hypotheses (max 300 words)
The objective of this study is to assess the impacts of increased the investment on agricultural VT on the economic growth and social welfare in the Sudan. Therefore, the study will use a recursive dynamic CGE modelling framework (STAGE-Edu) to answer the following questions:
1. What are the potential influences of expanding the investment in agricultural VT sector on human capital growth, households’ welfare, labour markets and the production structure?
2. How would the agricultural VT system reduce the unemployment rates and participation rates of child labour?
3. How would the growth of agricultural VT sector alter the productivity levels of the workers in the agriculture?
4. What are the appropriate choices for reallocating the government expenditure between the agricultural and non-agricultural VT sectors?
c. Describe the methods or approaches you will use to answer your research questions (max 500 words)
The study will use a recursive dynamic CGE model, which called STAGE-EDU model. This model provides a well-suited toolkit for evaluating the effects of investment policies on a various educational system. Furthermore, it’s developed to accommodate the VT and allow depicting the impact of various policies targeting the vocational training system with special focus on the agricultural sector in the Sudan.
The model considers a small open economy with exogenous world prices and includes thirteen production sectors. These activities involve eight non-educational sectors (agricultural, industrial and services), seven educational sectors (primary education, academic secondary education, secondary vocational education, tertiary education, agricultural vocational training and non-agricultural vocational training). Production factors in the model are fifteen, including physical capital, land and twelve cohorts of human capital classified based on their gender, education and training skills and potential.
The model captures the movement of the labour across various labour categories or sectors using a migration function as suggested by Flaig et al. (2014). The migration between various sectors is permitted only within a certain category of workers. On the other hand, the number of migrates across various labour groups within one sector is defined as the products of a term, changes due to previous determinants with including the cost of all education. Consequently, the changes in sector factor efficiency are modelled depending on the number of the migrated workers and the average productivity of the old labour type.
The model also comprises four types of institutions: household, enterprises, government and the rest of the world. It includes income and expenditures for ten representative household groups, which are classified by location (rural and urban) and income level (five quintiles). The government account distinguishes into the core and taxation accounts, with the latter containing direct and indirect taxes.
The growth of a physical capital stock is modelled relied basically on a dynamic conceptual framework of Thurlow (2004). The procedures of the accumulation of physical capital are redacted endogenously, basing on the previous period investment for generating new capital stock for the subsequent period. The initial stock is defined depending on the capital earnings in the base years. Although the sectoral allocation of new capital is fixed during the period, the final allocation in the current period depends on the capital depreciation rate and on sectoral profit rate differentials from the previous period.
The accumulation of human capital stock is programmed to links the educational outcomes and the workforce, following Lofgren et al. (2013). A Logistic approach is employed to estimate the ratios of the various student outcomes per educational cycles. Furthermore, the educational choices are modelled using Constant Elasticity of Transformation (CET), pursing Marouani and Nilsson (2016). The changes in the educational decisions are oriented by changes in; (i) education quality, (ii) education cost, (iii) education facilities, (iv) wage premiums and (v) household’s consumption per capita.
d. Describe your main data and information sources (max 300 words)
The study will combine quantitative and qualitative research methods to achieve its stated objectives. It will be used two types of data that include; (a) SAM data and (b) non-SAM data. For the first type, it will employ a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for the Sudan and the year 2012, which is developed by Siddig et al., 2016, serves as the database for the study. Beyond the SAM, the model demands additional data involves debt stock, data on production and factors (employment, unemployment and stock per activity), population data, historical data on government investment and projection data for macro indicators (GDP, population, government expenditure … etc). Moreover, it requires specific data from the schooling systems for each educational cycle to update the human capital stock over the time. Overall, the non-SAM data was collected from various public and private institutions in the Sudan such as the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), ministry of finance, ministry of general education, ministry of higher education and scientific research. Furthermore, a part of projection data was collected online from the website of international organizations such as world bank, international monetary fund (IMF).
e. How does the research proposed above relate to your PhD thesis or dissertation (max 200 words)?
The main objective of my PhD research project is to develop an economy-wide dynamic simulation model that accommodates the VT system in the economy. This model considers the linkage between the vocational training system itself and other formal education systems. Moreover, it links the outcomes from these educational systems and the labour market in a dynamic framework.
In this study, the model will be extended through including various type of VT systems, i.e. agricultural and non-agricultural trainings, allowing the interaction between those systems themselves and the rest of economy. Furthermore, the study will investigate the potential impacts of increasing the VT investment on agricultural productivity, household’ income and welfare.
However, the child labour and the gender were excluded from the basic model, assuming that the dropouts or graduates who aged less than 15 years choose to stay at home until they reach age 18 before entering the labour market or coming back to the school at any age. While in this version of the model, it is given them additional choices either they are entering the labour markets or seeking for the VT at any age, which is realistic assumption for most of developing countries.
f. How would a UNU-WIDER internship contribute to your research? (max 200 words)
Since my bachelor study, I have developed a special interest in the economic and social development issues, as addition to my aspiration to be an expert in the field of policy analysis and simulation modelling. However, I wanted to combine those interests of mine as a Junior Researcher at International Agricultural Trade and Development Institute (IATD), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where I am currently doing my PhD. Doing research at IATD enhanced my research abilities through the exposure to excellent opportunities provided by IATD, such as participating in workshops and training courses, reading and assimilating relevant knowledge extensively to broaden my scope and deepen knowledge in the field of my specialization. Therefore, this internship will provide me great opportunity to exchange my knowledge with the scientist and experts in the UNU-WIDER. Moreover, it assists me to improve my experience and follow my personal mission to contribute to sustainable development and the optimization of resources in my home country. I believe that the strongest aspect of my application is my heart, my profound desire and determination to make a difference in the lives of the least fortunate among us. I want to thank you for considering my application duly in your program.
g. Reference
Ahmed, T. (2016). "Labour market outcome for formal vocational education and training in India: Safety net and beyond". IIMB Management Review, 28(2), 98–110.
Bellakhal, R., and Mahjoub, M. (2015). "Estimating the effect of vocational training programs on employment and wage".: The case of Tunisia. Economics Bulletin, 35(3), 1820–1833.
Daoud, S., Salah Eldeen, N., Bello, A. (2017). " Rural Urban Youth Migration and Informal Self Employment in Omdurman Market Sudan". International Journal of Science 6. Retrieved September 20, 2017, from: https://www.ijsciences.com/pub/pdf/V62017051270.pdf.
Eichhorst, W., Rodríguez-Planas, N., Schmidl, R., and Zimmermann, K. F. (2012). "A Roadmap to Vocational Education and Training Systems Around the World". Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA). Discussion Paper. (7110), 1–35.
Flaig, D. (2014). " Factor Mobility and Heterogeneous Labour in Computable General Equilibrium Modelling". Dissertation, Retrieved February 21, 2015, from: http://opus.uni-hohenheim.de/volltexte/2014/982/.
Ibrahim, I., Mohamoud, A., Powell, M. and Abdelrahim, H. (2013). “Skills Development in Sudan, the Formal and the Informal Reality”. Thematic/ Policy Paper, 1 – 67. Retrieved April 01, 2015, from: http://www.oecd.org/education/innovation-education/41538706.pdf
Lofgren, H., Cicowiez, M., and Diaz-Bonilla, C. (2013). "MAMS – A Computable General Equilibrium Model for Developing Country Strategy Analysis". Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling SET, 1A, 159–276.
Mahgoub, F. (2014). "Current Status of Agriculture and Future Challenges in Sudan". Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala 2014, Current African (57).
Marouani, M. A., and Nilsson, B. (2016). "The labor market effects of skill-biased technological change in Malaysia". Economic Modelling, 57, 55–75.
Walker, K. and Hofstetter, S. (2016). “Study on Agricultural Technical and Vocational Education and Training (ATVET) in Developing Countries”. Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, FDFA Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Global Programme Food Security.