A continental network, Sub-Saharan Africa Skills and Apprenticeship Stakeholders Network (SASASNET), has committed to RPL, the AfCFTA Skills Passport, and to formally recognise the skills of tens of millions of artisans and tradespeople who have spent careers working outside any official system.
By Isqil Najim
Dozens of African government representatives pledged, on Wednesday June 3 2026, to overhaul how the continent trains and certifies its workforce, and endorsed a declaration that could transform the careers of millions of skilled artisans, mechanics, builders etc who have spent entire careers outside any formal recognition system.
The Abuja II Statement of Action 2026 was adopted unanimously on June 4 at the Nigerian Air Force Conference Centre following the conclusion of a three days of ministerial dialogue, technical sessions, and stakeholder consultations at the 3rd Annual Regional Conference of the SASASNET.
In a communique signed by Secretary General Hon. Ousman Sillah, SASASNET commited governments, development partners, and the private sector across the region to ten concrete Action plans.
SASASNET observed that informal apprenticeship accounts for the majority of practical skills acquisition and employment creation across Africa, yet it operates without legal recognition in many jurisdictions, gets minimal public financing, and produces credentials that vanish at national borders.
“We reaffirm our collective commitment to transforming Africa’s apprenticeship systems into inclusive, quality-assured, gender-responsive, adequately financed, digitally enabled and internationally recognised pathways to decent work,”
The RPL
The most prominent provision concerns Recognition of Prior Learning, RPL. Under the agreed framework, member states will develop national RPL systems to formally assess and certify the competencies of working artisans, master craftspersons, and apprentices whose skills came entirely through hands-on experience rather than classrooms.
An experienced mechanic from Lagos’s Ladipo market, or a welder from the Niger Delta with years of proven capability, would be able to cross borders freely and pursue contracts in their field. Rather than forcing experienced professionals to repeat academic cycles, RPL allows rapid assessment and credentialling grounded in real-world mastery.
The communiqué specified these systems must integrate into national qualifications frameworks, ensure portability of certifications, and reach rural and sub-urban areas where the bulk of informal apprentices actually work.
For Nigeria, the commitment carries particular weight. Take for example, the Igbo apprenticeship system and other local trades — spanning manufacturing, commerce, construction, tailoring, tiling, and more — remain disconnected from formal certification infrastructure. RPL offers a route to change that without dismantling what already works.
While RPL addresses domestic recognition, the AfCFTA Skills Passport tackles cross-border movement. The declaration commits governments to advance continental skills mobility and facilitate an electronic Skills Passport mechanism within the African Continental Free Trade Area architecture, paired with harmonised qualifications frameworks and mutual recognition of credentials between countries.
This is to ensure that a certified artisan anywhere on the continent should be able to take their skills where they’re needed.
To SASASNET, free trade in goods and services means comparatively little if the skilled labour needed to build factories, maintain equipment, and deliver services remains trapped within national borders by incompatible credentialing systems.
Apart from the RPL and the Skills Passport, the communique laid out eight additional resolutions — strengthening apprenticeship policies, establishing national apprenticeship councils, increasing public investment, creating National Skills Development Funds, expanding training levies, and shifting toward long-term basket funding.
Member states are mandated to establish pathways to improve workshop setups, strengthen legal recognition of apprenticeship arrangements, and expand social protection and health and safety coverage for apprentices. Entrepreneurship education, with specific focus on micro-enterprises, women-owned businesses, and youth-led ventures was also mentioned.
The declaration urges stronger industry participation and mandates apprenticeship quotas and skills transfer requirements on large infrastructure projects. Digital apprenticeship systems, AI-assisted skills planning, and electronic credentials all feature in the resolutions as well. Gender commitments run throughout, with targets on women’s participation in high-earning technical fields and improved access for persons with disabilities.
SASASNET framed apprenticeship and skills development in economic terms — not as a social safety net.
For decades, vocational training across Africa has been categorised and funded as poverty alleviation. This along with underinvestment, low institutional status, and policy frameworks that treat TVET as a fallback for those who couldn’t access university. The Abuja II Statement pushes back directly, positioning skills development as a strategic investment in productivity, competitiveness, and long-term economic transformation.
The declaration also included accountability mechanisms largely absent from previous regional commitments — an annual country reporting requirement, a continental monitoring and evaluation framework with agreed indicators, and a regional knowledge-sharing platform on digital innovation in apprenticeship.
Private sector bodies and trade employers made explicit pledges to expand quality workplace learning, invest directly into local training councils, and champion local content obligations across large infrastructure programmes. Member states have been asked to develop national action plans and designate institutions responsible for driving implementation.
For the tens of millions of skilled workers building the continent’s infrastructure, manufacturing its goods, and training the next generation of craftspeople entirely outside any formal recognition framework, the Abuja II Statement is, at minimum, a formal acknowledgement that the system has failed them — and a structured, multilateral commitment to address it.
“No Artisan, Apprentice, or Skilled Worker is left behind in Africa’s development journey,” it declared.