WYTEC Blue:

The WYTEC Blue project stands for “Women & Youth Technical Capacity for the Blue Economy: Growing Technical Capacity amongst Women and Youth in Canada & West Africa for a Safe, Secure and Sustainable Blue Economy”.

Context

Building on DOTCAN’s partnerships within Canada, West Africa, France and Germany, this project focuses on training for blue economy professionals in ocean technology, ocean business and maritime security. The aim is to bring together Atlantic Canada’s emerging ocean entrepreneurial expertise and Africa’s demographic dividend to help build a blue economy on the basis of trained people and scientific knowledge to promote both sustainable livelihoods and a healthy ocean. Youth unemployment is a major problem across coastal regions on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly for women. This has led to calls to empower young people with entrepreneurial skills that enable them to create their own enterprises in sectors with job multiplier effects. DOTCAN’s values are built on inclusion, diversity, equity and access, and the project goal is to strengthen entrepreneurial prospects and employment in the blue economy for youth and women.

Aim

The WYTEC Blue project will develop two virtually delivered, modular courses taught by Canadian and West African subject matter experts from academic, business and government sectors. The courses, one on Ocean Technology, the other on Maritime Security, will share modules on business development, entrepreneurship and skills needed for participants to thrive in public, private and NGO sectors. Cohort engagement via structured and free form networking and knowledge exchange among participants and subject matter experts will be key. The courses will be taught at selected teaching “hubs” in Halifax, the Technical University of Atlantic in Cabo Verde and institutions in Ghana.

This 3-year project will support course design and development and an initial 1-year course offering. Informed by a gap analysis, the project team will identify content, establish instructional teams for modules, and support, during the final year, two courses with a set of 2-4 partner institutions in West Africa and one training and knowledge exchange hub in Nova Scotia. The courses are envisioned as forming the foundation for a subsequent, larger scale training program, including Masters-level program(s) taught at West African Universities. The training will be “joined-up” with parallel development of ocean business centres and Canadian involvement with maritime security capacity in the West African sub-region.

Significance

This project is directly relevant to the commitments made by the Government of Canada at the Nairobi Sustainable Blue Economy Conference (SBEC) which it co-sponsored on November 26th – 28th, 2018. Indeed, Canada’s contribution to the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) was announced in conjunction with the commitments made at that conference.

WYTEC Blue will strengthen and connect the emerging capacity of a small island developing state (Cabo Verde), and partner institutions in West African nations, with Canadian multi-sectoral expertise in ocean technology, maritime security and business development. The training program will both support capacity development and develop long-lasting partnerships with Canada. The initiative will be a visible Canadian contribution to development of a sustainable blue economy and sustainable livelihoods, particularly for women and youth, in a region of high environmental and rapidly growing economic importance.

The WYTEC Blue project (UN2021-002) has received the formal endorsement by the Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC), as a project forming part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030. This endorsement is a recognition that the project will play a central role in supporting the Ocean Decade mission to catalyze transformative ocean science solutions for sustainable development, connecting people and the ocean, in order to achieve the Ocean Decade vision of ‘the science we need for the ocean we want’.

Funding

This Project is partially supported by a financial contribution from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) / Ce Projet est partiellement appuyé par une contribution financière de Pêches et Océans Canada.