< Projects in Sierra Leone

In 1976 I was offered a job with a small architectural practice in Sierra Leone.   The first job was to complete the documentation for the 2nd IDA education project and get construction started after which I managed the design and supervision of construction of most of the projects that came into the office.  These included projects for the World Bank, the EU and DFID (or ODA as it then was) which ranged from a paramedical school to agricultural extension workers training centres, teacher training colleges and secondary and primary schools.

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Two projects in particular, the Paramedical School in Bo that was funded by the EU and the Agricultural Extension Workers Training Centre at Njala University funded by ODA/DFID demonstrate how my ideas for the design of medium to low-cost educational buildings for the tropics were developing. 

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By the mid-1980s, Sierra Leone’s economy was in freefall and the practice had very little work.  At this point I was offered a two and a half year local consultancy by the World Bank Project Implementation Unit to develop designs for primary schools and school furniture that could be built by rural communities using as far as possible local materials. 

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Designs for classroom buildings and furniture were developed and prototypes were built in a number of rural villages and these designs were used by an architect working for UNCDF as the basis for a rural primary school construction project.  This became the ‘Upgrading of Bo Teachers College Project’ that constructed and equipped new teaching facilities at the college and built, using local labour and materials, new classrooms, workshops, toilets and wells at ten existing primary schools within a twenty mile radius of the college.  I was appointed Chief Technical Adviser/Architect to the project and managed it to its successful completion. 

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I met my wife in Sierra Leone and designed and built a house for us at Red Pump in Freetown in which we lived before leaving the country in 1990.