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.
