Unleashing Economic Transformation: Empowering TVET Institutions in Kenya through Strategic Funding - A Systematic Literature Review

A skilled workforce is a primary requirement for industrialization, economic growth, and sustainable development in developing countries. Technical and Vocational Education and Training hold a major role in producing a technical and entrepreneurial workforce; hence it's a key priority in Kenya's government development agenda. This paper discusses funding as a major challenge towards enhancing access, retention, gender parities, and completion levels in the TVET sector. We carry out a systematic literature review to identify that maintaining TVET institutions is expensive, and improving them comes at a price. The delivery of a quality workforce in TVET organizations is directly linked to effective management and strategic leadership to facilitate the entire process. We performed a systematic literature review to identify progress within our systems. The paper also identifies that funding and financing are major pillars in ensuring quality, relevance, access, and management, hence recommendations on improving TVET funding. Therefore, our major objective is to discuss strategies for funding TVET institutions in Kenya, thus the sustainable development agenda. We identify the major pros of increasing financing for TVET institutions promoting research, development, and innovative projects in TVET institutions (1), increasing and strengthening organizational capacity (2) promoting access and equity to TVET (3), and improving learners' engagement with stakeholders.  The research concludes that HELB financing is crucial for performance efficacy in these institutions. Donors funding is also important in influencing learners' enrolment and retention rather than completing the program. Finally, we identify that self-financing has a limited influence on the performance of these programs. Therefore, we recommend that policyholders review the higher education funding to reach more beneficiaries, hence sustainability. They should also assure learners of the total funding of the desired programs to improve learners' relevance, access, equity, and retention.