1. Introduction: Program Relevance and Rational
Sierra Leone, like most developing countries is challenged by low level of critical-mass of personnel to deliver Development and Business Management and Governance services, to enable the country to leap-frog to a competitive middle-income country. Development and Business, which are the centre-piece of the country’s self-sustaining transformation is severely affected with the lack thereof and/or the limitation of these core development and business professionals to deliver the crucial service of governance & management of development and businesses. This, to some extent has coursed most donor interventions to be backstopped by international technical assistance including the design of development programs and management. Faced with the legacy of the 10 years’ brutal civil war and its attendant brain-drain, the country is yet to fill the gap of these desired professionals in development and business management and governance, lost as a consequence of the civil war. These practitioners that should have addressed the widespread desire for development at community and chiefdom levels to district and national levels on the one part, and for the sustainable transformation of public sectors and private-led sustainable development are to a larger extent missing in the trajectory of the development discourse in the country. This has also in part limited the country’s capacity to stabilize and sustain the momentum and the continuum of the development outputs and outcomes of development and business interventions. The BEST therefore aims at filling this crucial Development and Business professional gap with best-practiced contemporary thinking and technique to enable the country to leap-frog to a competitive middle income country.
The BEST’s Post-grad School for Professional Certification in Development and Business Management & Governance (PDBM&G) seeks to provide the where-with-all expertise to both the Public and Private Sector Governors and Managers to capably deliver services in Development & Business Management & Governance, respectively in Sierra Leone and other countries in the ECOWAS and Sub-Sahara Africa in general. The BEST Post-grad Professional School is therefore designed to offer specialization in three key focus areas (KFAs), viz.:
(i) Contemporary e-Development Management and Governance (e-DM&G),
(ii) Contemporary Small, Medium and Large Enterprises (SMLEs) e-Business Development, Management and Corporate Governance (e-BM&G), and
(iii) The BEST Information Communication Technology (ICT) Academy for CompTIA, CISCO and Microsoft Professional Certifications
This competency-based post-grad training is therefore designed to offer short courses leading to the award of a professional post-graduate certificates and diplomas to university school leavers and development and business practitioners. At the end of each course, participants are certified based on their specialties to have acquired the desired bases, tools and techniques and the requisite capabilities on the application and the applicability of development & business governance and management in the public or the private sectors.
BEST Development and Business Governance and Management Post-grad Training School
Business Engineering Science and Technology (BEST) was established in 2003 as the first Sierra Leonean development and management consulting firm. The firm was set-up with the special mission: to offer high quality technical and socially and environmentally sensitive development services that applies the best-practiced knowledge and methods of Business, Engineering, Science and Technology (hence the BEST), to meet the complex challenges of development and management interventions of the Public and the Private sectors including profit and not-for profit organizations. The BEST is therefore a multi-disciplinary Development and governance service provider. The overarching goal of the BEST’s development and Management services is to deliver competitive best-practiced and result-based Development and management services using the best socio-technical and e-know-how and practices to support the Governance and Management of development projects/programs and the recurrent service delivery interventions of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and business administration. Our services have been delivered to MDAs and Donor supported Development Projects/programs, on the one part, and on the other, supported the Development and Corporate Governance of Small, Medium and Large Enterprises (SMLEs). For the purposes of the post-grad training, the BEST will also draw from its sister organization – Centre for Economic and Social Policy Analysis (CESPA’s) Research and Development Services that includes its research in public service delivery and governance (see CESPA’s Publications and Kamara and Kamara et al Book ), as well as, its R&D support to MDAs’ Policy Planning and Management of Development Programs and Sector Reviews and support to Donors Data Cycle Management, using computer assisted data collection.
Over the BEST’s 18+ years of existence and service to the nation, in partnership with reputable international organizations and companies, the BEST has gained enormous experiences in providing interdisciplinary technical assistant in best-practiced development and management services. These services among others include technical assistance in social, engineering, science and technology development and management services in a varieties of public and private sector interventions. Over these years, the BEST has provided technical assistances in diverse development service areas including the formulation and designing of projects and policies, designing of M&E systems and Implementation Manuals, providing implementation support and served as implementing partner for diverse interventions. The firm also provides capacity-building and strengthening services to a varieties of sectors including Agriculture, Economic Development, Local Government, Water Supply and Sanitation, Education, Health, Energy, Trade and Tourism sectors. The BEST and CESPA thus have and can serve as a repertoire of tacit/experiential national knowledge to complement other literature sources of explicit and tacit knowledge bases for the proposed Post-grad School in Development and Business Management and Governance.