Sierra Leone: Youth advocating for Tech & Engineering chosen as this years Queens Young Leaders

On 29 June 2017 HRH Queen Elizabeth II presented 60 young people from across the Commonwealth with the Queens Young Leaders Award for exemplary service to country and community. Kumba Musa and Salton Massally are the two exemplary young people to be recognized from Sierra Leone this year.

Kumba Musa is an engineer. In 2015  she established Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Women Sierra Leone (STEM Women) to motivate women and girls to pursue STEM careers and improve STEM education in the country.

Musa and her team of young tech professionals visit primary schools across the country to encourage pupils to learn STEM subjects. They also mentor female students interested in pursuing careers in STEM.

STEM Women Sierra Leone plans to introduce STEM Social Clubs in schools, and recruit and train STEM teachers. Musa is an alumni of the Limount College Secondary School, Freetown, and the Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. She is currently pursuing a Masters Degree at the University of Dundee is Scotland.

Salton Massallay is the founder of careers.sl, a website that aims to reduce unemployment by advertising job opportunities around Sierra Leone. He is also the founder of tech start-up iDT Labs, which uses technology to develop scalable solutions for some of the country’s social and economic issues. They also provide computer literacy training programs for business owners and recent graduates.

In July 2016, iDT Labs won the International Disaster Relief Award (Small Company) at Business in the Community’s 2016 Annual Responsible Business Gala for creating a mobile based hazard payment solution for 30,000 Ebola Response Workers during the Ebola crisis of 2014-2015. Massallay hopes to extend the services of careers.sl workshops to teach computer literacy to young people. Salton Massallay is also an alumni of the Limount College Secondary School and the University at Buffalo.