Tanzania: Lutheran Church to launch centre for labour skills

Arusha. The Lutheran Church is set to launch new training centre aimed at imparting job skills to the youth in pastoral communities.

The Monduli Institute of Technology, Entrepreneurship and Cooperatives (Mitec) will start admitting students in September this year.

"It will be the first polytechnic to cater for the specific development needs of the pastoral communities,” said the director of the project Dr Eliamani Laltaika.

He added that the institute would focus on technology, entrepreneurship and cooperatives.

The multi-million shillings project is the brainchild of the north-central diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania (ELCT).

The church is targeting the nomadic communities and other marginalized groups in the northern regions being the pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and hunter-gatherers. 

"This is a long awaited dream conceived way back in 1995,” he told The Citizen, adding that Mitec will operate from Monduli town.

It will take over the former premises of a Belgian Rural Development Agency which operated in the area until the late 1990s. The buildings were later handed over to the church.

According to Dr Laltaika, some Sh200 million has been allocated for the rehabilitation of the structures.

The premises have four main lecture rooms, 27 offices, a library, a multi-purpose hall and a workshop.

The training institute will start with an operational budget of Sh300 million and 50 students but the aim is to have an annual enrolment capacity of 200 students, said Dr Laltaika, who is a senior lecturer of the Arusha-based Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST). Funds will be raised by the church and NGOs.