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Redefining Engineering Entrepreneurship and Innovation Education At the University of Sierra Leone

15th May 2021- 

Mornings on the slopes of Mount Aureol are unlike any other; the chilled breeze and tranquil quietness are broken only by chirping birds, honking cars and the chatter of commuting students. These serene plains are home to the oldest western-style university in West Africa Africa. The Fourah Bay College (FBC), was founded in 1827 and for almost 200 years, it has been the epicentre of higher education and advanced learning in Sierra Leone.Despite its illustrious heritage   in the aftermath of an 11-year civil conflict which provoked a downward spiral in the type and quality of education, many efforts are being made to transform learning outcomes for students. .

In August 2018, H.E President Julius Maada Bio launched the Free Quality School Education (FQSE) Program and allocated 21% of the national budget to fulfil the government’s flagship commitment to boost educational standards nationwide. This undertaking promises to directly benefit 2.6 million school children , who make up approximately 37% of Sierra Leone’s population. These and other developments demonstrate that there is indeed the political will to effect inclusive and  radical reforms in education. Further engagements at the Technical and Higher Education level have seen the government increase the salary of university lecturers and student hostels and learning environments have been upgraded by the government. New departments of Mining Engineering and Architecture have been established at FBC as the government promotes human capital development relevant to the 21st Century. 

Much has changed at Mount Aureol since the gloomy days of the early post-conflict years; there is even an unfamiliar spectacle of DSTI’s CIO Dr David Moinina Sengeh, lecturing close to hundred students in a final year (honors). While Dr. Sengeh serves as the Minister of Basic Education, he is one of the young, dynamic and spirited academics rewriting the narrative in post-secondary education. The course he is currently lecturing is titled Engineering, Entrepreneurship and Innovation program (FENG 510).

Dr. Sengeh believes that FENG 510 has the potential to make meaningful contributions to Sierra Leone’s Human Capital Development Agenda through a robust course model designed to equip students to rethink business models that are more impactful, sustainable, and connected to other sectors of the economy such as Poverty Reduction, Education, Health and Agriculture.

FENG 510 can empower students with access to information, job opportunities, and services that invariably improve their living standard whilst enhancing opportunities for data gathering and analysis for more targeted and effective entrepreneurship strategies. However, the biggest value is that the course is hands-on. Students will develop and present prototypes accompanied by detailed business plans as part of the course – Dr David Sengeh.

Students currently enrolled in the course believe it raises crucial awareness, inspires and stimulates their interests as budding engineers to embark on careers focused on harnessing the culture of upscaling technologies to develop creative entrepreneurship schemes.

Mr Emmanuel Gaima, a mechanical engineering student, said; 

“The FENG 510 program presents a unique opportunity for Sierra Leone to leapfrog in its efforts to cultivate a sustainable nation-building drive. Dr. Sengeh is making great strides in this direction.  It is a surreal experience to be taught by Dr. Sengeh. He is cheerful, welcoming and above all highly intelligent. Bearing witness to what he has accomplished both academically and as a high-level government official  is a wake-up call to us as youths and future engineers, not merely to be spectators or observers in the struggle for national development but to be active participants and proponents of it.”

Miss Afanwi Dobgima, a student who hopes to specialise in electrical engineering, also expressed identical sentiments;

I think FENG 510 is an enlightening and mind-blowing class. Dr Sengeh has helped me to gain a better understanding of how we can co-opt technology and

entrepreneurship to improve Human Capital significantly. We have discussed at length the limitations of engaging technology here, two of which are inadequate electricity supply and data availability and affordability. As Engineering students, he challenges us to do more to tackle these issues. That being said, leveraging tech is a step-by-step process. With all hands on deck, we can help Sierra Leone achieve the best version of itself. These are some of the thoughts I always leave the classroom with. 

With such enthusiasm and appetite for success, Dr. Sengeh is convinced that students in the FENG 510 program are uniquely positioned to make cutting-edge interventions across multiple sectors in the coming years as they will possess the requisite toolkits to tackle existing drawbacks preventing the integration of emerging tech for national development. For Instance, in the Agricultural sector, farmers can leverage the Internet of Things to optimise productivity and reduce waste through data-driven “precision farming” techniques. Also, with numerous health challenges exacerbated by climate change, limited physical infrastructure, and a lack of qualified professionals, technology can help mitigate these threats and build sustainable health care systems.

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Sierra Leone designs online portal to take long wait out of teacher recruitment

A new teacher recruitment portal developed at the Directorate of Science, Technology, and Innovation (DSTI) will make it easier and faster for education administrators to hire teachers, and allocate teachers to classrooms. The Teacher Application, Approval, and Allocation Portal (TAAAP) upgrades Sierra Leone’s paper-based teacher recruitment processes, including application, approval, and allocation system.

“We created this digital one-stop-shop Teacher Application, Approval, and Allocation Portal (TAAAP) to help streamline how schools receive the teaching staff they need,” said Dr. Moinina David Sengeh, Chief Innovation Officer.

The portal decentralizes the teacher recruitment process giving teachers and administrators access to resources for professional development, grant information, school data, and education best practice research and the latest education policies developed by the government of Sierra Leone. It also limits clerical or eligibility errors in the application process which often can be hard to detect thereby improving efficiency.

“Before, if you wanted to hire teachers, each application needed to be reviewed and signed manually by several people. A physical paper application had to be moved across the country between three different agencies. Five copies of each application were signed by both the Minister and Chair of the Teaching Service Commission. This process can often take more than six months. Many applications have been destroyed and lost in past years, leaving thousands of applicants waiting in vain for decisions that will never come,” said Dr. Sengeh.

With TAAAP, teachers can find and apply for jobs online, they can track the status of their applications, and the school administrators can see where there is a need for more teachers and make the necessary allocations. School administrators can post public job openings for all to apply to, and once reviewed and authorized, the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) can then approve the prospective hires automatically linking the records to other systems of the Ministry and TSC. Each listing is live for at least one month, and schools receive all approved hires for final selection.

The Ministry of Basic and SeniorSecondary Education and the Teaching Service Commission will adopt the portal in the implementation of Sierra Leone’s flagship Free Quality School Education Program over the next five years. Since 2018 the government of Sierra Leone has committed 21% of its annual budget to education spending to bolster human capital development. President Bio launched the National Innovation and Digital Strategy (NIDS) in November – a promise to leave no citizen behind, and a commitment to use digitization to improve the delivery of goods and services to citizens. The portal ensures that no prospective teacher applicant is left out of the recruitment process.

Citlali Trigos-Raczkowski demos TAAAP at State House – Freetown – December 2019

“We’re trying to increase transparency. Anyone that saw an application will be able to track its movement from one agency to the next. They can see who reviewed the application and who approved it. Applicants will also be able to see where their applications are at all times, whose dashboard it’s on, who has reviewed it already, and they can see when they’re going to get a response,” says Citlali Trigos-Raczkowski.

Trigos-Raczkowski, an MIT graduate with degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science, led the creation of the portal with other staff at DSTI and the Teaching Service Commission. Trigos-Raczkowski is a full-stack developer, interested in the intersection of social good and technology. As an intern at the Human Capital Development Incubator at DSTI, she worked with the team to develop the portal making it easier for citizens and decision-makers to track otherwise cumbersome recruitment processes.

“Each application leaves a digital footprint, and the portal shortens the process of teacher recruitment,” says Trigos-Raczkowski.

The portal allows for on-the-go tracking for everyone involved, high-scale authorization and authentication, and mobile-first access.

“There is a lot of back and forth and paperwork that takes up much of our time. Imagine having to sign 5000 applications from 5000 applicants each application with a total of five forms, making it 5000 times five; it’s just too much. But now, with this portal, we can take action to improve recruitment with the click of a button,” said Sorie I. Turay, Secretary, Teaching Service Commission.

Staff at Teaching Service Commission and MBSSE are testing the portal which will be made live to the public in 2020.

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