The National Public Procurement Authority (NPPA) has won $30,000.This happened on Friday 18th June 2021.The National Public Procurement Authority (NPPA) team led by the Director of Electronic Government Procurement, Mr. Alie Bangura, the brand new female Manager Northern Region, Mrs. Patricia Rowe, a Senior Officer at the Procurement and processes Directorate, Madam Michelle Afiyah and others excellently pitched the Authority’s idea on digitalisation of the Annual Public Procurement Assessment process in 2018 and won the NPPA a handsome prize of $30,000 out of the $80,000 prize tagged by Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) held at Radisson Blu Hotel Aberdeen Freetown.
The institution was selected along 5 others by DSTI to compete for a total of $80,000. The program is called Governance Innovation Bootcamp. Participants where trained on how to identify problems in their Institutions and bring up solutions using technology.
Sierra Leone, like many African countries, has a very young population coming of age during the fourth Industrial Revolution, an era both defined by rapidly emerging new digital media and by complex global challenges, includes climate change, migration and widening economic inequalities. Advances in Science, Technology and Innovation are shaping the world faster than many industries and governments can or know how to react.
This transition to being digital led by government and its partners, must be agile, well-directed, abundantly resourced, and critically secure. It should be accompanied by a vision that is developed with and for the people who will benefit from it.
The government of Sierra Leone, under the leadership of President Julius Maada Bio, has developed a 10-year National Innovation and Digital Strategy (2019-2029) aimed at guiding Sierra Leone’s investments, policies, and governance frameworks for the country’s present and future development.
NIDS situated Sierra Leone in the field of digital agile governance by focusing on effective service delivery, citizen engagement, and the digital economy driven by innovation and entrepreneurship. Such a transmission will reduce the cost of governance and reduce corruption while increasing National productivity.
In 2018, President Bio established the Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) in the office of the President and appointed Sierra Leone’s first-ever Chief Innovation to help the government deliver on it Medium Term National Development Plan ((MTNDP) and to establish Sierra Leone as an ‘Innovation Nation; a nation where agile, exploratory and research driven-ups and initiatives led by people of all ages can problem solve at the appropriate scale, and within the right economic policy and regulatory frameworks.
Participating institutions were; NPPA, NRA, MTI, Teaching Service Commission, NMA and Office of Registrar General.
Credit: Office of Legal and Corporate Affairs Directorate, National Public Procurement Authority
