Abstract: This study investigates the employment outcomes, training relevance, and satisfaction levels among graduates of Arusha Technical College (ATC), Tanzania, with a specific focus on the employability of female graduates. Utilizing a descriptive survey design, data were collected from 586 graduates (88% response rate) from the 2022/2023 academic year across various technical and engineering disciplines. Findings reveal significant gender disparities: six months post-graduation, male graduates exhibited higher rates of formal (31.4%) and self-employment (13.6%) compared to females (15.4% formal, 9.6% self-employment). A substantial proportion of female graduates (42.3%) pursued further academic studies, suggesting a strategic response to enhance employability. The study highlights the critical role of practical training, online job platforms, and personal networks in securing employment, predominantly in the public sector. Challenges include limited access to startup capital for self-employed graduates and pedagogical issues within TVET programs. Recommendations emphasize gender-responsive curriculum reform, enhanced industry linkages, targeted entrepreneurial support for women, and improved graduate services to foster more equitable labor market integration for female TVET graduates in Tanzania.

Abstract: Entrepreneurship education has been widely adopted across higher education systems in Sub-Saharan Africa as a response to youth unemployment and constrained wage employment. Despite this expansion, entrepreneurial intentions among graduates remain persistently low, raising concerns about the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education implementation. This narrative literature review examines why the implementation of entrepreneurship education often fails to translate into entrepreneurial intentions, focusing on the mediating role of entrepreneurial attitude. The review synthesises empirical, conceptual, and policy-oriented studies published between 1991 and 2025. Guided by intention-based models, the synthesis shows that the implementation of entrepreneurship education frequently improves entrepreneurial knowledge and awareness but does not consistently foster positive entrepreneurial attitudes, the most proximal predictors of entrepreneurial intention. Pedagogical practices remain largely theory-driven and assessment-oriented, with limited emphasis on experiential, reflective, and affective learning, which are necessary for attitude formation. In Sub-Saharan Africa, this limitation is compounded by contextual constraints, including necessity-driven entrepreneurship, limited access to finance, weak institutional support, and high perceived risk, which further undermine the development of entrepreneurial attitudes. Methodologically, the literature is dominated by cross-sectional designs that insufficiently interrogate mediation pathways linking implementation processes to intention outcomes. Conceptually, this review foregrounds entrepreneurial attitude as the central mechanism explaining the persistent intention gap, rather than exposure to entrepreneurship education alone. The study concludes that without deliberate alignment of entrepreneurship education implementation toward attitude formation, entrepreneurship education is unlikely to generate sustained entrepreneurial intentions in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Abstract: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continues to experience critical shortages and maldistribution of health workers, yet many newly qualified nurses and midwives remain unemployed or underemployed after training. This narrative review (1978–2025) synthesises policy and empirical literature to explain why nurse unemployment persists alongside unmet health service needs. Anchored in health labour market theory, human capital theory, and systems governance perspectives, the review traces the normative policy foundations from Alma-Ata (1978) through later health workforce frameworks, and examines how fiscal constraints, wage-bill ceilings, weak workforce planning, fragmented governance, rapid expansion of nursing education, and precarious private-sector employment contribute to limited absorption of graduates. The review also highlights consequences for practice and health systems, including skills attrition, psychological distress, erosion of professional identity, informal or unpaid ‘volunteer’ work, and intensified migration intentions, which can further weaken service delivery capacity. The paper argues that the nurse unemployment paradox is primarily a failure of effective demand and coordination rather than a simple surplus of trained personnel, and that solutions require integrated planning linking education intakes, accredited training quality, health financing, and funded posts. Policy options relevant to SSA include institutionalising routine health labour market analysis, aligning education enrolment with medium-term expenditure frameworks, strengthening transition-to-practice pathways, improving regulation of training markets, and using ethical regional and international mobility agreements to reduce waste while protecting health system resilience.

Abstract: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continues to experience critical shortages and maldistribution of health workers, yet many newly qualified nurses and midwives remain unemployed or underemployed after training. This narrative review (1978–2025) synthesises policy and empirical literature to explain why nurse unemployment persists alongside unmet health service needs. Anchored in health labour market theory, human capital theory, and systems governance perspectives, the review traces the normative policy foundations from Alma-Ata (1978) through later health workforce frameworks, and examines how fiscal constraints, wage-bill ceilings, weak workforce planning, fragmented governance, rapid expansion of nursing education, and precarious private-sector employment contribute to limited absorption of graduates. The review also highlights consequences for practice and health systems, including skills attrition, psychological distress, erosion of professional identity, informal or unpaid ‘volunteer’ work, and intensified migration intentions, which can further weaken service delivery capacity. The paper argues that the nurse unemployment paradox is primarily a failure of effective demand and coordination rather than a simple surplus of trained personnel, and that solutions require integrated planning linking education intakes, accredited training quality, health financing, and funded posts. Policy options relevant to SSA include institutionalising routine health labour market analysis, aligning education enrolment with medium-term expenditure frameworks, strengthening transition-to-practice pathways, improving regulation of training markets, and using ethical regional and international mobility agreements to reduce waste while protecting health system resilience.

Abstract: School administrators play a pivotal role in shaping the conditions under which teachers implement competency-based curricula (CBC), particularly through leadership practices, resource allocation, and institutional support that influence teacher commitment. In Sub-Saharan Africa, CBC reforms have expanded rapidly over the past three decades; however, implementation outcomes remain uneven as school administrators operate within persistently constrained education systems. This narrative review synthesises empirical and policy-oriented literature on the system-level challenges confronting school administrators in strengthening teacher commitment to implementing CBC in secondary schools. The review draws on peer-reviewed studies from Google Scholar, ERIC, and Scopus, alongside grey literature from ministries of education, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published between 1997 and 2025. The findings identify key system-level constraints, including limited instructional leadership capacity, weak professional development structures, large class sizes, resource and staffing shortages, accountability pressures, and policy–practice misalignment. Collectively, these interacting constraints position school administrators as change agents operating within highly constrained systems, thereby limiting their capacity to foster sustained affective and normative teacher commitment to implementing CBC. The review highlights the need for policy and institutional reforms that strengthen school-level leadership capacity and provide enabling conditions for administrators to support teachers’ engagement with CBC requirements. It concludes that without addressing the system-level constraints on school administrators’ capacity, efforts to strengthen teachers’ commitment and sustain CBC implementation in secondary schools are unlikely to succeed.

Abstract: The transition to competency-based curricula (CBC) has intensified expectations placed on teachers as central agents of curriculum reform, requiring sustained professional commitment alongside pedagogical competence. While institutional factors influencing CBC implementation have received considerable attention, less synthesis exists on how teachers’ socio-demographic characteristics shape commitment to curriculum reform, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. This narrative review synthesises empirical and policy-oriented literature on socio-demographic determinants of teacher commitment in CBC implementation in secondary schools. This narrative review synthesised literature published between 1997 and 2025 sourced from Google Scholar, ERIC, Scopus, and relevant policy documents. The review focuses on key socio-demographic variables including age, gender, teaching experience, educational qualification, employment status, and school location. The findings indicate that socio-demographic characteristics influence not only the level but also the dominant dimensions of teacher commitment-affective, continuance, or normative-shaping how teachers engage with CBC reforms. Younger and more highly qualified teachers often exhibit stronger affective commitment, while older and permanently employed teachers demonstrate greater normative and continuance commitment. Gendered workloads, rural–urban disparities, and employment precarity further condition teachers’ capacity to sustain reform engagement. The review highlights the need for differentiated implementation strategies that recognise heterogeneity within the teaching workforce. It concludes that effective CBC implementation in secondary schools requires policies and practices that account for teachers’ socio-demographic realities alongside institutional support mechanisms.