Upending traditional donor development models through empowerment and investment
Carlton (left) together with a graduate of the Bosch Rexboth Licensed Training Centre in Tunisia which is supported by SIFA.
Meet the Team Leader of a pan-African programme building the skills necessary for graduates to find work while supporting creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
SIFA Funding Windows
- Large investment projects led by a domestic training provider partnering with a private sector entity granted up to €3M with a 10% contribution requirement.
- Investment projects led by international business partnering with a domestic training provider granted up to €1.5M with a 30% contribution requirement.
Eligible projects for Windows 1 and 2 include procurement of training equipment; construction, rehabilitation or expansion of learning infrastructure; training of trainers; curriculum design; and learner scholarships.
- Innovative pilot projects granted €250,000-450,000 to provide impetus to innovation in skills development as a basis for a transition to higher productivity and job promotion.
Learn more on the SIFA project page.
Carlton Aslett is busy. When we spoke he was about to head off to Cameroon, followed by a trip to Tunisia and then South Africa – and that was just over a three-week period. As Team Leader of the Skills Initiative for Africa (SIFA) Financing Facility, Carlton bounces between eight countries in all corners of the African continent where he is responsible for overseeing a €120 million Challenge Fund that empowers institutions to foster employment and entrepreneurship among youth, women and vulnerable groups.
“We support mostly universities, polytechnics, TVET colleges and private sector actors working with training institutions. We also work with smaller organisations doing innovative work to link training with employment,” Carlton explains. “That actually is the overall goal of SIFA … how do we move from the lab to the training room to the workplace without this disconnect between the skills and competencies of those who graduate and the demands of industry.
“A lot of people are being trained but not for what industry requires. This impacts investment from within country and from overseas because why would you invest in a factory or production line if you do not have the right skills base. SIFA is trying to tap into that multiplier effect. Further, with greater opportunity at home coming from this positive labour market policy, the incentives for migrating away should hopefully diminish.”
Carlton at Dire Dawa Polytechnic College in Ethiopia (funding window 1)
Amplifying local best practices and pioneering sustainable solutions
Implemented by the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) with financing from Germany and the EU through KfW Development Bank, SIFA is a pilot project that aims to improve job opportunities for young Africans by supporting innovative skills development initiatives in close cooperation with the private sector. Operating in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Togo and Tunisia, SIFA provides grants to projects in three areas (see sidebar). With the end goal of elevating the quality and employability of the workforce, these initiatives must engage businesses, meet local industry demands, align with national strategies, and deliver visible regional benefits. The competitive funding model gives grantees the autonomy to develop and propose their own projects with greater freedom and responsiveness than perhaps other development funding allows, including curricula and infrastructure projects and the promotion of inclusivity through scholarships. The plan is to scale up those initiatives that deliver results and have enabled graduates equipped with practical skills to smoothly transition into the workforce.
To date, SIFA has signed 30 contracts with another 20 planned for this year, with the smallest being €250,000 and the largest €3 million. All projects go through rigorous due diligence and, once approved, follow a meticulously planned and managed oversight process involving a team of 24 people – such as technical experts, fund officers and country coordinators who oversee the individual grant projects.
“We’re a small, compact group, but each grantee has their own project implementation team, which needs to have the appropriate capacity” Carlton says. ”The trick is to partner with the grantee to manage that investment to enable the grantee to execute the technical and administrative requirements of the funding … We are doing what we can to optimise the impacts for the beneficiary. That’s the interesting part of what we do, trying to find ways to push boundaries and continuously find the marginal improvements in how funds are used.”
It’s challenging, complex work involving multiple stakeholders – including the private sector and politicians with their own unique expectations. But as someone well-versed in complexity and large-scale skills development interventions, Carlton is well positioned to succeed.
Empowerment-driven development
Prior to his current role, the 52-year-old Brit has held Team Leader / Chief of Party roles on a variety of large projects. For almost three years, he led an EU-financed grant fund improving secondary education in Malawi. Before that, Carlton spent close to five years in Tanzania overseeing two programmes consecutively – one from USAID focussed on early-grade reading and the other, funded by the UK, improving the quality of primary education across a quarter of the country. Among other places, he has lived and worked in Papua New Guinea, Liberia, Viet Nam, and Nigeria mostly focused on public finance, human resources and education. Coincidently enough, for someone now working at NIRAS, Carlton’s career started in Denmark where he earned a Masters from Roskilde University.
With funding from Window 2, Dire Dawa Polytechnic College received support for the ICT Skills & TVET Center of Excellence Development for Youth Employment & the New Economy Transformation project. Three curricula were developed (Hardware and Networking Service, Web Development and Database Administration, and Fiber Optics Networking) and funds are being used to build classrooms and procure equipment. Due to high market demand and the training needs of the participants, the college is already providing training in the Hardware and Networking Service curriculum. Between 2022 and 2023, over 500 students received training.
“I started off in a consultancy where it was all about human development. I was really lucky to have great mentors. My first assignment was in Senegal working with inclusive education and then I ended up in Viet Nam leading a small component of a €250 million project on child protection, community participation and governance that really left a positive mark,” he recalls.
To get some perspective on the other side of the donor-beneficiary relationship, Carlton switched sides in Vietnam and began working for Enabel (formerly CTBBTC), the Belgian development agency.
“I went to Liberia as I wanted to understand the development context in an environment under reconstruction. Without realising it at the time, I took the Asian concept of ‘development through empowerment’ with me to Africa, where each assignment advanced my thinking. Development only happens if it is driven by people who feel the advances of what we are doing. It’s theirs – not ours – to do,” he says.
He has applied the same thinking to SIFA. “It won’t work without ownership and decentralised empowerment at each level of the system.”
Patience and practicality
In another life Carlton would have been an artisan, working with his hands and designing furniture. His fingers are covered in plasters, hiding scratches and cuts he’s earned while renovating an old property in France where he spends his time when he’s not traveling for SIFA. “Away from my desk, I want to be practical and see the results before my eyes.”
For someone who appreciates tangible outcomes, running a large, multi-actor continental programme like SIFA would surely give pause for thought. But with 30 projects currently being implemented and several others close to approval, the programme has gained momentum. SIFA currently runs until the end of 2025.
“We have the resources in place and are beginning to see success,” Carlton notes. “Of course it’s not perfect. If we wanted a perfect business, we wouldn’t be in human development given the complex multiple sets of variables for success … the real test of success will be what the pilot countries and continent can take from this, what learnings we get from the programmes and their graduates transitioning into the workplace and how such funding may be adapted to do better in the years to come.
“SIFA speaks to me because it is the embodiment of the idea of shifting development thinking. You bring your project to SIFA and it will invest in it, but you need to implement it. Growth requires greater domestic leadership, but also regional and continental leadership hence the role of the African Union Development Agency in SIFA (AUDA-NEPAD). The challenges are many and the demands placed upon grantees and our team are great. However, working with and across the 50 grantee teams and working with the SIFA team, I see energy, ambition and a refusal to bow down to the many obstacles that impact each project and the portfolio.
Carlton and his family
Download the SIFA project infosheet
