When appointed Chancellor of the Eastern Technical University of Sierra Leone in October 2021, I spent some time reading about the history of universities across the world. I was particularly interested in their “Beginnings” and their sustained future. I discovered that it was a common pattern that the formative years of the universities were marked by unreliable funding and chequered operations. In many of these Universities, citizens’ involvement and participation ensured and assured support and stability. They all reminded me of the old primary school saying that: “Rome was not built in a day”. Rome was certainly not built in a day, BUT certainly, Rome was built, principally, by the people of Rome. Given this to be true, and indeed it is true, how can we, as a community build and sustain the Eastern Technical University of Sierra Leone?

Tonight, I am going to talk to you about our University, our Pride and our Future. I am going to talk to you, about ownership of our University, about community involvement into making the Eastern Technical University of Sierra Leone great; about building a University with our own “bare hands”. I am going to talk to you about our university and community engagement and drive. I will also talk to you about how the University can get involved in community or civic engagements, about how the Eastern Technical University for Sierra Leone and the community can be co-creators of a strong, productive and capable University that would not only productively interact with the community, but also meet community needs and beyond.

I will give you a general review of relevant literature on universities and community engagement. I will end up this lecture by talking about the creation of an endowment fund, an endowment fund where every “good and concerned citizen” will be willingly obligated to own and make it grow. I know there is some ambiguity in the combined use of the words “willingly obligated” but I believe it will appeal to every “good” community member, irrespective of age, gender, social, political and/or economic standing to be consciously obligated to contribute toward the ETU-SL Endowment Fund.

The thrust of this lecture, particularly with respect to the relationship/partnership between the university and the community is motivated by a quote from the Commonwealth Association of Universities in 2001:

“Universities face high expectations from the societies of which they are part. They will be judged, and learn to judge themselves, by the variety and vitality of their interactions with society. Those interactions, and university decision-making to foster them, are what we term engagement. Twenty-first Century academic life is no longer pursued in seclusion (if it ever was) but rather must champion reason and imagination in engagement with the wider society and its concern”.

The argument is simple. There has to be, and there must be a relationship between the universities and the communities. The days when universities were considered as Ivory Towers were over. The era of classical philosophy, the “Plato-said-so” era is now largely part of history.

At the time of that statement in 2001, I was myself a Commonwealth Scholar and a Member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities.

I would like, at this juncture, to ask a few relevant questions, namely:

Which way forward for the Eastern Technical University of Sierra Leone?
Now that we have the Eastern Technical University of Sierra Leone, which way forward for the community?
Which way forward for both the University and the Community as Partners?
We may also attempt to state the converse, that is, Which way backward for the University and the community.

A general overview is both compelling, and enlightening.

In the late 1800s, Jose Marti, the Cuban Independence Leader described education as the Key to the world. “To educate a man”, he states, “is to give him/her the keys to the world…..and to give him strength to journey on his own…”. In the case of the Eastern Technical University, that “world” starts with our community and transcends beyond our community to the national and global environment. The ETU-SL, therefore, is the key to our community. Education equips us to be of service to ourselves, to our Community, and through our community, to the world at large.

In order to put this in a clear perspective, I will attempt to describe the general role of the University in a community. This is going to be a general description but as we move on, I will implore you to situate the Eastern Technical University in your mind. Next, I will attempt to describe the role of the Community in relation to ownership of the new University. In a way, I shall endeavour to establish ownership – of course, Landlords know exactly what to do when their house is on fire. I will then contend or more appropriately, develop a nexus between the University and the Community. My overriding thrust would be my emphasis on the symbiotic partnership between the University and the Community and citizens’ role in helping the university to grow and be sustained.