Chief Minister of Sierra Leone, Dr David Moinina Sengeh, has told the ‘Government Services Forum’ at the World Government Summit in Dubai that Sierra Leone is using technology and innovation for public service delivery and to improve the lives of citizens.
Dr. Sengeh mentioned that Sierra Leone had built digital solutions like a USSD dictionary to compliment books and deployed an SMS result checker that had been used close to five million times across the country, while adding that mobile connectivity had also been expanded to cover nearly 90% of the population. He said that they had also developed a mobile artificial intelligence Chat GPT to help teachers deliver better content to students.
The former Basic Education Minister noted that Sierra Leone’s digital experience showed that when deployed appropriately, technology was not only a catalyst to transform service delivery but also a public good and great leveller for development, adding that the introduction of the SMS result checker had helped parents and pupils check their examination results for free and instantaneously no matter their location.
“During COVID-19 school closures, we used the hybrid technologies to ensure our children did not fall further behind even as we were among the first set of countries to re-open schools safely. We know that to compete globally, we must use digitalization as a core enabler for national development,” he said.
The Chief Minister furthered that as part of President Bio’s digital transformation, Sierra Leone had introduced technology in revenue mobilization to reduce corruption and bureaucracies or register businesses and corporate services to make public services more efficient and reasonable for all.
“The Ministry of Agriculture is already digitalizing agricultural services, offering farmers access to critical information, market data, weather forecasts, and best agricultural practices directly to their phones. We believe that this will empower farmers to make informed decisions, enhance productivity and promote sustainable agricultural practices that will enable us to ultimately feed Sierra Leone,” he noted.
Other notable speakers at the event included H.E Ana Brnabić, Prime Minister, Government of the Republic of Serbia and H.E Mohamed Bin Taliah, Chief of the UAE Government Services.