The Department of Engineering and Geosciences, Nimba University (NU), has announced a partnership with ArcelorMittal Liberia (AML) to enhance its technical and professional capacities.
The deal allows students in the College of Engineering and Geosciences to benefit from practical knowledge in a number of areas through field trips to the ArcelorMittal Vocational Training Academy in Yekepa.
It will also permit key Nimba University staff to get first-hand training and help the school build and make operational its one laboratory.
The Acting Dean of the College of Engineering and Geosciences, Nimba University, Emmanuel A. Donseah, said in the new MOU with the Belgium-headquartered steel company NU has asked that the company makes available to the school decommissioned equipment essential for practical learning.
Dean Donseah said, “Now, we are sending the students to VTC in Yekepa for training. We have written the management of ArcelorMittal Liberia so that they can give us decommissioned heavy duty equipment and other electrical materials.
“While we are fighting to have the students do the hands-on for now at the ArcelorMittal Vocational Training Academy in Yekepa, in the next four to five months we want the company to help us build our own system and laboratory for demonstration,” he added
This lab, to be set up by AML’s help, the dean said, will not only benefit engineering students enrolled in full degree programs, but also serve the Nimba University’s own vocational training program.
Seasoned technicians from AML Training Academy will serve as lab demonstrators at the NU Laboratory when it is fully established and made operational.
“We are also in partnership with the AML Vocational Training academy and they have agreed to train our technicians that are already teaching here in various discipline for the period of three years,” the Dean of the College of Engineering and Geosciences, Nimba University, added.
He said, according to the MOU with the AML Training Academy, a set of NU staff will be given “full skills” so that, upon return from the AML-supported three years of training, they would serve as lab demonstrators for the school and help with training.
“It will be like a training of trainers program for the technical staff here, and we are grateful and happy that this is happening for the good of all Liberians and to the credit of the AML,” Dean Donseah told journalists.
In 2017 ArcelorMittal opened its Vocational Training Centre (VTC) in Yekepa with a US$7 million investment.
The training academy seeks to provide young people with globally recognized and certified apprenticeship training for roles such as diesel mechanics, electricians, mechanical fitters, boilermakers, welders and instrumentation technicians. It is one of a kind in the country.
The first group of 46 apprentices started their training in March 2018, and in March 2019 the second group of 54 students, including 6 women, entered the training program with the goal of having 50 apprentices graduating every year.
Annually, ArcelorMittal Liberia supports the Nimba University with US$50,000, in line with its commitment under the mineral development agreement with the government of Liberia.
Last week Dean Donseah praised ArcelorMittal for its “timely and continuous support to the university”, noting that the company’s has never fell short on its obligation to the school.
He highlighted the pride the university takes in its collaborative effort with AML, aiming to cultivate a new generation of skilled Liberians well-versed in the technical disciplines crucial for the mining sector within Liberia. “Without ArcelorMittal there would be no Nimba University,” he stated.
