Sierra Leone Government Chief Information Officer

The government of Sierra Leone badly needs a Chief Information Officer, who will ensure that critical data such as how much money is actually spent on projects is known to the president before he gives an interview like this one.

Doing

• Blogs don’t build schools.
• Forums don’t build hospitals.

African Virtual School

I am passionate about education and have been thinking for a long time about how education could be used to develop Africa.  I have had several attempts – from learnbook.net, which attempted to provide textbooks through to http://www.instantrevision.com, an online revision site for senior secondary West African students.   I was not entirely happy with the results though because:

1. the cost of shipping and distributing textbooks proved to be too high and
2. in the case of instantrevision.com, I relied on the content from the West African Examinations Council which I did not feel reflected the changes in education over the alst 15 years.
3. Finally, difficulties getting payment over the Internet from Africa

The African Virtual School (www.africanvirtualschool.com) seeks to overcome all of these three obstacles.

1. The AVS focuses on Numeracy (Maths), Literacy (English) and ICT and all the material is original but modeled on UK standards.
2. All the material will be digital and can be read online or downloaded

We are still struggling to find a solution to the payment problem but have started encouraging conversations with one scratch card payment provider and are also exploring mobile payments.

I am excited about the prospect that AVS holds and look forward to a large uptake.

Snow in Kent – 2.1.09

No school or work today.

Only 2% of Waec Students in Sierra Leone passed this year

According to news sources , a mere 476 out of a total of around 24000 students who did their West African Examinations Council exams this year were able to meet University requirements.  They probably failed Maths or English as a pass in these two subjects is a pre-requisite for University Entrance.

Time to look to e-learning and other solutions that will work inspite of all the bad teaching that we have.

Freemaths.co.uk provides worked examples, quizzes and games covering large aspects of the UK’s maths curriculum. As maths is a universal language we believe it will also be of great value to maths students in the other parts of the world. It is completely free, does not require registration to view the contents (only if you want to comment . It complements our paid for services (www.primemaths.co.uk) and http://www.instantrevision.com

Bird and Fortune on Sub Prime

Private Equity in Sierra Leone

British private equity investors are turning their attention to Sierra Leone, the West African country that is trying to recover from its decade-long civil war. Tom Cairnes, the co-founder, with Niall O’Cathasaigh, of the Sierra Leone Investment Fund, which trades in the capital, Freetown, as ManoCap, says that only robust investments to boost indigenous businesses will help to spur economic growth in the nation of 6.3 million people.

Mr Cairnes said: “If we employ Sierra Leoneans in the next five to ten years, create business management schemes and bring people through managerial processes within our business, we would be creating the next generation of managers [and] this is the only way to change the lives of the majority of the people.”

Via AfricanPath

Trainanytime.co.uk provides small bitesize training courses that you can fit around your work day. These courses are all affordable and are directed at those who want to update their skills.

Product Update: 28.08.08

From the Primemaths Blog: How the dragons use maths in the den
New Revision Network formed on Ning to centralise all forums. Learnbook Exam Revision Network