Addis Fortune (Addis Ababa)
Workineh Zewdie
16 May 2011
The United States (US) State Department apologised on Friday, May 13, 2011, for a computer error that had led thousands of people across the globe to believe they had been selected as finalists in the 2012 Diversity Visa (DV) lottery.
The status of nearly 15 million visa applicants were made available online on May 2, although official notification of the applicants was made by the embassy only on Thursday, May 12, at a press conference at the US Embassy in Addis Ababa.
The State Department expressed its regret for causing any inconvenience and made assurances that a new random selection process will be conducted and announced on July 15.
Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) students in Ethiopia are not eligible for the 2012 DV Lottery programme, the US Embassy announced.
They are excluded from participation due to the recent changes made to Ethiopia’s TVET curriculum.
The DV programme requires applicants to possess a certain level of educational or professional experience, according to Christine Parker, deputy consular chief of the embassy. This includes either 12 years of basic education or, at least, two years of full-time experience in a qualifying occupation, she explained.
The TVET curriculum in use does not include the basic educational component required by the lottery programme.
Under US law, purely vocational education cannot be considered for DV qualification purposes, according to a press release from the embassy.
The curriculum was prepared to satisfy the growing demands of the industrial sector which calls for more vocational training and less theory, according to Derege Alemu, an official at the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) TVET department.
“The trainees already learned most basic educational components until grade 10, and now we are delivering basic vocational training to be market oriented,” he told Fortune.
In 2009/10, 355,420 students studied under the TVET programme nationwide.
“Even though Mathematics and English courses are no longer given independently as of this year, we are learning more theory since there is a shortage of practical equipment at our college,” said Addisu Tekeste a second year student at Addis Abeba Tegbareid TVET College.
Those applicants may still be eligible if they can produce three years’ transcripts showing the incorporation of basic educational courses in their previous TVET 10+3 programmes.
Unlike previously, applicants of the 2012 DV lottery must enter their confirmation number at www.dvlottery.state.gov after July 15 to find out whether they have been selected for further processing, according to the latest press release from the embassy.
In 2011, the State Department received more than 12 million applications for the DV lottery programme. Of these, 5,200 were Ethiopians and around 100,000 entrants were selected worldwide in the same year for further processing. The embassy granted more than 3,000 visas to Ethiopian lottery winners in the year 2010.
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