Forestry is critically important in Tanzania and Zambia as its instrumental in climate change mitigation and offers untapped possibilities for job and wealth creation. Forestry graduates are to be at the forefront to address these issues. Yet, Tanzanian and Zambian VET graduates lack the competencies needed to be employed, develop the forestry sectors, and be expert in the climate-smart forestry. SUSFOR is a partnership between Tanzanian, Zambian Estonian and Finnish forestry educational institutions to strengthen forestry VETs’ capacity to provide competence-based, relevant, work-life responsive, and inclusive training for ecological, social, and economic development. This will be achieved by capacitating VETs through skills matching with private sector, training VET staff on pedagogy, and technical, managerial and climate-smart forestry skills, co-producing competence-based training materials, internationalizing students, and creating organized and permanent collaboration mechanisms with industry. All activities are validated with VET students engaged in the activities. Each partner will take a specific role in the project, based on their expertise. HAMK and LFS will facilitate the methodological approach and share their expertise and experiences. The Tanzanian and Zambian partners will lead contextualizing, applying, and implementing project practices and results. The project will lead to improved VET profile and teacher competencies, and strong continuous collaboration with the private sector. The main deliverables are: skill and competence report of an employable VET graduate, min. 70 % of staff / VET trained, training materials produced to min 4 courses/VET, Excursion pedagogy guide, Curricula guide, 2 Forestry Partnership Platforms for VET-industry collaboration, Alumni networks and Marketing and Visibility Plans for each TZ and ZM VET. Sustainability and upscaling of project results are ensured through sustainability plan and tailored dissemination.