By: Adama Jallow
President Adama Barrow has declared that Africa must depend on its institutions to develop its human resource, and stimulate economic growth and development.
President Barrow was speaking Saturday at the official laying of the foundation stone for the construction of three faculty blocks for the Gambia University of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology (USET) in Brikama, West Coast Region.
President Barrow said that with a project that builds the capacity of the country’s institutions to train African youths on African soil using modern approaches and equipment, they can look forward to a new Africa that is able and ready to tackle its challenges.
He thanked the World Bank for the foresight of designing a programme linked to the Africa Centre of Excellence (ACE) initiative to positively influence development.
He pointed out that for obvious reasons, the event has a high profile on the Government’s educational transformation agenda of providing quality and relevant tertiary and higher education to Gambians, that in the past, only a selected few had access to higher education
However, he said through the National Qualifications Framework, the education system now provides pathways that allow students from Grade Nine (9) to choose careers in Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and other educational programmes.
The President said that expanding such opportunities has made it necessary to establish a university system in the Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology, hence the significance of the occasion, that henceforth, students who choose to become engineers and architects can proceed beyond the Higher National Diploma (HND) level to pursue degree programmes in Engineering and related disciplines at USET.
He further assured that his government will continue to prioritise the development of The University of The Gambia (UTG), and it will endorse the efficiency mechanisms adopted to integrate three schools of The Gambia College into the UTG with the endorsement to the upgrading and strengthening of the Management Development Institute to deliver degree programmes and support the Civil Service Reform and the broader sector administration programmes.
He disclosed that teacher training and education management now have a new dimension that creates avenues for higher levels of qualification, leading to degree courses, a result of upgrading the school of education into a teacher training university.
“To nurture our young institutions, we will collaborate with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, and De’Montfort University in Leicester, the United Kingdom. By the time we wean our universities from those well-established institutions, the Gambians currently on PhD programmes and mentorship will have been qualified enough to join their compatriots to take full responsibility of our universities,” he said.
He said that the Government expects the senior secondary schools to provide qualified students for USET, while the regional TVET centres feed the HND programme, that by implication, the education sector needs to establish and strengthen TVET centres across the country, especially in deprived areas.