Non-formal education and training for manpower development: regional conference on training development

Abstract

As formal education becomes too costly, too structured and often irrelevant to the immediate needs of society there is growing interest in exploring the potential of other forms of training for work force development. In developing societies, the need to search for alternatives has become extremely urgent in the face of prohibitive costs of formal education, rapidly increasing populations and scanty training resources. The colonial system led to the establishment of educational systems, which were, by and large, wholesale transfers of metropolitan programmes without much regard to their relevance to the real needs of African countries. The main thrust of such education was to develop a marginal layer of literate work force supportive of colonial administration.