Background and History

Background

West African countries are suffering from a poor science and technology education, low rate of science and technology graduates from middle school and universities, limited number of job placements in the technology industry, limited use of science and technology processes and procedures by students and teachers to solve everyday problem in Sierra Leone. West Africa’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education survey results of 2009 compiled by InfoDev.org indicates that the education sector’s ICT infrastructure is under-served.

In Sierra Leone for example, there are approximately 81 technical/vocational education institutes serving 5,824 students with a teaching population of 219 including university professors but only 2% of these students are computer literates. Student enrolment rate continues to decrease from junior high and, senior high to post-secondary institutions at an alarming rate. The total number of science and technology education students and teachers continues to decrease even further due to lack of adequate teaching materials, availability of science and technology education tools which boils down to poor results in national examinations leading from Junior high to senior high and senior high to college/technical/vocational/university.

There are several reasons for this condition and some of them are thus; lack of standard policies for the use of ICT in education and government. The lack of adequate science and technology curriculum for educational institutions, high cost of PCs & internet connectivity, political in stability, brain-drain, corruption in government, and lack of qualified human resource capacity to service institutions of higher learning. LAM-TECH Foundation understands that all of these problems can be solved at once but starting from the basic will help speed the process. The use of information technology in schools and hence government will help reduce corruption, increase knowledge

History

The LAM-TECH Foundation was founded on May 4th 2009 the birthday of the founder Tamba Sheku Lamin. I celebrate New Year’s on my birthday and during the celebration I plan for the rest of the year. My birthday in 2009 happened to meet me in Sierra Leone while on vocation visiting family and friends after being away for four years. My experience during the entire period in Freetown, Sierra Leone was not too great.

I had problems with people at all levels and I was not sure why. The problems started over seven university students asked me to help them complete their final year projects because they are unable to get help from the university and their industrial attachment supervisors. Two of the students were studying for a B.Sc. Degree in Computer Science from Njala University and the others were studying for a B.Sc in Engineering Degree from Fourah Bay College (FBC) including my brother Fallah Lamin. Their projects ranged from Infrastructure Networking, Computer Graphics, and Programming to Website developments for the colleges and Sierratel. I interviewed each of them to get background information about their projects and understand the scope to see if can help. During the interview, I noticed that they have only about 10% to 20% knowledge and required resources to complete the projects.

Based on my education, experience and availability of required resources in the information technology industry I was able to help jump-start their projects and promised to continue while in New York until they are successful. The projects where assigned to them by their industrial attachment supervisors but none of these supervisors knew how to complete neither the projects nor the required resources to complete the projects. The college supervisors had no way of helping either because they are as handicap as the students themselves in terms of resources and knowledge to complete the projects. To cut matter short, there was no one available to neither help them for free nor provide the required resources. I interviewed some of the department heads and lecturers in FBC and Njala to find out why these students where in the position they found themselves. I found out that the teachers themselves are need of information technology resources and training to enable them do proper research and help students on their projects. They also informed me that most of the projects are copied from the internet anfd IT related because computer science and Engineering graduates find it easy to get jobs in the IT industry than their traditional fields of study. These students’ degrees relied on these projects. If the projects are not successful, they will repeat the year in college and do it again and again until they get it right.

On May 3rd the day before my birthday, I had a personal brainstorming moment for two hours thinking about a solution to help senior high school, college and university teachers and students bridge the digital divide between Sierra Leone and the rest of the world while planning my New Year. The answers from the session resulted into forming LAM-TECH Foundation which is dedicated to promote information & communication Technology education and Research in New York and West Africa. This mission will be achieved through four projects;

• “One Computer Per Home”
• “LAM-TECH Science Clubs for Students”
• “LAM-TECH Information & Communication Technology Resource Centre”
• “Lam-Tech ICT and Renewable Energy Research Institute ”