Challenge Fund Launch with Nepal Telecommunications Authority and Internet Service Providers

On May 31, 2019, the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) and UKaid Skills for Employment Programme (सीप) organized an interaction with six Internet Service Provider (ISP) representatives to explore and build consensus on the need for collective skill-building to create jobs and enable business/industry productivity and growth. At the event, UKaid सीप launched and introduced the Challenge Fund, explaining how the program’s co-investment and technical assistance can be mobilized by NTA and ISPs.

The event was a follow-up to previous engagements between UKaid सीप, ISPs, and NTA. In the second half of 2018, and as part of UKaid सीप’s inception phase, the program undertook a comprehensive assessment of skill gaps and engagements with the private sector to understand key market failures, gaps, and partnership opportunities for skilling and job creation in its five priority sectors, including Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Subsequently, an Ideation Lab in November 2018 with key ICT and ISP industry players, helped validate the reasons why companies underinvest or fail to invest in skilling, reskilling and upskilling initiatives; reasons include lack of industry-relevant training curriculum and weak linkages between employers and training institutes.

Conversations also brought to fore NTA and ISPs’ rural broadband/fibre expansion plans and mandate—with NPR 22 billion funds earmarked for rural connectivity—and the subsequent need for skilling initiatives and potential to generate jobs especially for women, disadvantaged groups, and people with disabilities, which directly ties in with UKaid सीप’s skilling and employment generation goals.

In May 2019, following a mega launch in Kathmandu of UKaid सीप’s Challenge Fund, an innovative mechanism to co-invest and support market-led skilling and job creation plans, UKaid सीप and NTA decided to renew conversations with the Nepalese private sector. Designed to identify action-oriented Public Private Partnerships (PPP) ideas that can be developed over the next two-four years with catalytic support from UKaid सीप, the interaction revolved around skills-building solutions that increase and improve access to the talent and workforce required in the context of the growing rural connectivity initiative led by NTA with support from ISPs.

Under the leadership of Acting Chairman Mr. Purushottam Khanal and Director Mr. Deepesh Acharya, on May 31, 2019, NTA successfully brought like-minded ISPs together with support from UKaid ???. Nearly 45 people representing NTA, DFID, UKaid सीप and ISPs –Worldlink, Vianet, Subisu, Mercantile, Classic Tech and Techminds—attended the half-day launch and discussion in Kathmandu.