The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc. Sonny Echono is relentlessly working round the clock to ensuring that standard of tertiary education in Nigeria and Africa at large is lifted to greater heights. The ES is committed to evolving proactive educational measures to right the wrongs, breach the obstacles while impacting new innovations to foster rapid growth and development in the sector.
Already, since he came on board, Echono has employed workable strategies to galvanize policymakers, political and business leaders, diplomats, civil society and leaders of thought, along with other key stakeholders from across Africa, United Kingdom, and the rest of the globe to explore diverse pathways for sustainable socio-economic development in Africa.
The education top echelon, himself a retired permanent secretary in the federal ministry of education has opined that “education and entrepreneurship linkage is Africa’s pathway to unleashing its greatness.”
This is why at the 9th Africa Leadership Magazine Summit held recently in London, United Kingdom, Echono was honored with the Africa Leadership Excellence Award in Educational Development from the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, HE. Philip Davis.
The award is sequel to Echono’s sagacity to navigating the trenches to dish best educational practices, and to set policies that would ensure total transformation in the education sector.
Also, the ES has spanned plenty effort to drive the infusion of technology into curriculum and instructional delivery process in Nigeria public tertiary institutions.
To this end, TETFund recently emerged as winner of the 2024 Anthology Visionary Award for Leadership in transforming education through technology.
The event took place in Orlando World Center in United States and had a global audience of over 2000 participants drawn from the Academia.
Nigeria is a developing nation with high educational potentials, and whose citizens are trailblazers in not just education but across other sectors of the economy.
It is therefore incumbent that for the man at the helm of top educational drive, like Echono, advocating and or charting policy and blueprint direction is key to actualizing the aspirations of a nation bent on forging a global roadmap.
Although TETFund under the leadership of Sonny Echono has obviously surpassed expectations. However, like Oliver twist, the quest to improve the variables and stem the obstacles has remained an unending pursuit.
It is worthy to note that TETFund has assisted greatly in bridging gaps in Nigeria.
It is gathered that the Agency has funded many innovative initiatives such as Research for Impact (R4i) and TETFund Alliance for Innovative Research (TETFAIR) targeted at deepening impactful research and uptake of research outcomes with potentials for commercialization.
It would be recalled that in 2023, over 600 lecturers from Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions benefited from the R4i programme and have developed 95 prototypes from the initiative.
Also, 44 teams of 176 researchers have been trained from tertiary institutions from the six geo-political zones, and the first cohorts have designed 16 prototypes, one of them being a hearing aid that is self-programmable, affordable and more suitable for African market.
The Executive Secretary of TetFund has said “the team responsible for the design participated in the ARC Centre for Digital Innovation Entrepreneurship programme at the Sheba Hospital in Israel, where they presented their innovation at the international community.”
While delivering a keynote address at the Summit in London on the theme, “Africa Unleashed: Navigating Disruptions, Enhancing Opportunities,” Echono stated that that “Africa has commenced its journey towards repositioning itself in global affairs, and advocated that policies and blueprints that will help the continent in navigating the identified obstacles and optimize opportunities for its greatness must be considered as paramount.”
According to Echono, “unlocking Africa’s immense potential requires a multilayered approach and should feature a convergence of different pathways in ensuring the continent attains the desired greatness.
“First, Africa must address its leadership crisis by adopting genuine democratic principles and values, promoting good governance and culture of transparency and accountability to achieve political stability and ensure lasting peace and security on the continent.
“Next, it must efficiently harness available funding sources (WB, AFDB, China-exim, and other bilateral loans etc.) and channel same towards massive infrastructural projects, with particular focus on energy (power), transportation networks, and modern communication systems, to facilitate economic development.”
According to media reports, Echono has stressed the need to deepen and strengthen regional integration.
He stated that “Africa must intra-trade and collaborate to benefit from the economic scale and leverage Africa’s collective potential while also promoting the need to revive a common identity and cultural renaissance that will assist the continent to preserve, celebrate, share and exports its rich heritage of customs and traditions in arts and culture, music and dance, fashion and cuisines, movies and athletic abilities through sport.”
As it stands, Echono is glaringly committed to providing a more equitable basis to build strategic partnerships with global players to access new markets, adopt new technologies and exploit investment policies.
The ES is optimistic that rapid development will strive and build a skilled and productive population when Africa prioritizes its human capital by investing in health care, poverty reduction, social welfare, and education.
At the moment, it is factual that empowering Africa’s young and growing population will yield bountiful benefits and enable the continent to leverage its competitive advantage in natural resources and human capital.
Of course, Echono is of the posit that such strides will remarkably “birth an era of rapid economic growth and a boom in innovation and entrepreneurship,”
Adagher Tersoo, a communications expert and public affairs analyst writes from Abuja.
