Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is widely recognised as an education system expected to produce a skilled workforce to meet labour market demands. To enhance production of graduates with relevant skills, the involvement of the industry in the provision of education is required. The involvement of the industry is crucial for providing inputs to training in determining the required skills to be possessed by graduates so that institutions can train people with relevant skills required in a specific occupation. Likewise, the industry can be involved in the development of curriculum, giving apprenticeship opportunity to students and teachers to acquire current workplace skills and donation of resources such as industry experts in teaching, finances and learning facilities and equipment.

Involvement of industries in the provision of TVET education has been realised in many developed countries considered having effective TVET system able to produce competent graduates to meet needs of the labour market and capable of boosting countries’ economy. Among of the major factors that have contributed to effective TVET system in developed countries is effective involvement of industries in training. Tanzania like many other countries has a TVET system which follows the Competency-Based Education and Training (CBET) approach which was introduced in 2003 with an objective of training and producing well-equipped graduates with relevant skills and knowledge demanded by the labour market. However, the literature indicates that TVET education in Tanzania is still not responsive to the needs of the labour market as its graduates lack relevant skills required. Therefore one of the factors that might have caused lack of responsiveness of training to the labour market is minimal involvement of industry in affairs of TVET education in Tanzania.

Hence, there is a need to find out factors constraining and motivating involvement of the industries in the provision of TVET education in Tanzania. Either there is a need of establishing the extent and modes of current involvement of industry in the affair of TVET education to set grounds for improvements. This is imperative since no such study has been conducted in the Tanzanian context investigating the impact of industry involvement in training to the quality of TVET education.

The study applied both quantitative and qualitative methods to collect and analyse data. A survey of 139 companies and enterprises operating in the extractive, tourism, construction, manufacturing and banking sectors were conducted. Either an in-depth interview with eight industrial associations related to the selected sectors conducted.

The study revealed that current involvement of industries in the provision of TVET education is very minimal, further the study identified eight motivational and nine constraining factors which affect the involvement of industries in the provision of TVET education in Tanzanian context. Furthermore, the study finds that the current level of involvement of industries in TVET education has an impact of causing the minimal relevance of Tanzanian TVET education to the labour market demands.

This study is expected to contribute to the implementation of National Skills Development plan formulated as a strategy to facilitate Tanzania to become a strong and competitive economy by 2025 in the realisation of Tanzania Development Vision 2025. This study will
inform implementers on suitable ways and strategies to involve the private sector and the industry on skills development for effective involvement of the industry in every stage of training as their inputs are key to enhancing quality education and producing qualified
graduates to fit in the labour market.