Sierra Leone’s Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, David Moinina  Sengeh, has highlighted his five years achievement as Education Minister of the country after bagging the World Government Summit’s Best Minister Award.

He highlighted achievements in a Facebook post on his page while expressing appreciation for winning such an honourable award, dedicating his award to the future of the children of Sierra Leone and Africa.

Sengeh noted that he didn’t get this global recognition because the education sector in the country is perfect, but because they have done so much and are committed to doing much more.

He said “One does not grow up wanting to be the Best Minister in the world. This is true even when you are privileged enough to be appointed as a Minister. But then, when the world decides to bestow such an incredible award on you, you are honoured, proud, grateful and inspired. I am all of that and more.”

Sengeh appreciated President Bio, his teams at MBSSE and DSTI, the community, his family, loved ones and his close friends for their support and love and the people from the critics and cynics.

He appreciated President Bio referring to him as his mentor, and friend with whom he discuss each and every policy and programmatic idea, noting that most of the achievements were initiated by the President.

“This passion of this is why he is the UN Secretary General’s Champion today. We need leaders like Bio in Africa (I mean when last did a President stay and participate in a technical education summit for 5 hours??? as he did at the recent Foundational Learning Exchange Summit in Freetown) This is why we need to overwhelmingly re-elect President Bio in June for the future of our country!” praised Sengeh

Sengeh also stated that he is inspired by the teachers and the students all across Sierra Leone and the African continent, noting that they work super hard because they believe in and understand their role in transforming our countries.

Presenting the 10 highlights of the past five years, he wrote that the ministry has: changed all our curricula and syllabi to reflect 21st-century skills; employed over 12,000 new teachers and trained over 22,000; added about 1,000 classrooms to schools to hold the additional 1,000,000 learners to school; added over 120% of kids with disabilities in schools and achieved gender parity; has over 100,000 boys and girls who pass their senior secondary school exams; deployed over 10 million books, teaching and learning materials;  deployed technologies used millions of times by hundreds of thousands of pupils; expanded school feeding to nearly 800,000 children; led the world in global education visioning, financing and monitoring; added 22% of the budget in education. “

He concluded that on any metric in education are better today than they were in the previous administration adding that they are hopeful that they are on track to being better.