Upskilling, Reskilling, and Future-skilling Cambodia’s Workforce: Building Successful Partnerships Between Universities, Local Governments, and the Private Sector

• In Event: Digital Transformers: How Technology is Reshaping Higher Education in Malawi, Cambodia, and Peru

Proposal

Cambodia envisions becoming an upper-middle-income country by 2030 and high-income country by 2050. To achieve this goal, it must shift from labor-intensive industries to a more digitally skilled workforce. Cambodia has a young and digitally savvy population, with over 65% being under 30 years old, and the demand for ICT skills is expected to increase due to rapid growth in digital penetration, particularly with a widespread adoption of the most popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. In 2012, Cambodia’s digital adoption rate was at 12% and rapidly rose to 57% by early 2024. Digital growth, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, has incentivized Cambodia to harness technology, leap into technology utilization, and transform education systems by upskilling the workforce with digital skills to meet the job demands of the future. To make this leap successfully, higher education needs to be more nimble in transforming programming to prepare youth with the skills to succeed in the digital society.

The USAID Digital Workforce Development (DWD) project is successfully meeting its goals in building a digitally competent workforce to better meet market-demand through (1) building institutional capacity of participating higher education institutions (HEIs) in designing market-driven courses and programs in the area of information and communication technology (ICT) with international certification of their educational standards; (2) improving digital skills and competencies among faculty members and university students through training and mentoring support in soft-skills, digital content knowledge, and innovative teaching pedagogy; (3) offering 74 scholarships and 30 internship opportunities targeting underserved, disadvantaged populations; and (4) equipping HEIs with a career center as a bridge among private sector, local universities, and prospective workforce for networking to improve the supply-demand linkages of HEIs, private sector, and youth workforce.

DWD, in partnership with 12 HEIs and 26 private companies, reviewed and co-design more than 500 ICT courses, benefiting more than 2,000 university students. The courses are responsive to a fast growing digital economy in Cambodia and also well aligned with Cambodia's Digital Skills Development Framework. DWD further collaborates with the Amazon Web Services to build a digital cloud computing workforce, including training 25 faculty members and 113 students to become internationally certified cloud computing educators and practitioners. The KHoding Hero program reached about 11,000 rural students at more than 30 secondary schools. Learning from the first two years of implementation, DWD has shifted towards ensuring the sustainability of the most impactful interventions such as curriculum development, capacity improvement of local HEIs and faculty, and private sector engagement to envision sustainable models that support the management and ongoing operational costs of career centers, entrepreneurship training and contests, and KHoding Heroes program.

USAID/Cambodia will share successes, good practices, lessons learned, and challenges from the USAID DWD project that fosters tripartite partnerships among the local government, HEIs, and private sector players. These partnerships support transforming HEIs by improving student soft skills, amplifying experiential learning by harnessing technology, and providing internationally recognized credentials to prepare graduates to meet the needs of the digital economy.

Author

• Dany Khieu, USAID/Cambodia