The Deputy Vice–Chancellor, Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, Prof. Sahr Gbamanja, has tasked science teachers in primary and secondary schools in Africa to devise more practical ways of teaching the subjects.

Gbamanja said science teachers across the continent should use improvisation and resourcefulness in making science more meaningful through the integration of familiar low-cost materials in teaching.

The don stated this while delivering a lecture at an inaugural seminar which also featured a formal presentation of a policy brief project and online newsletter by the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library Institute for African Culture and International Understanding and Centre for Human Security, Abeokuta.

Gbamanja, whose lecture was titled: Nexus between Science and Culture: A panoramic view from Sierra Leone, argued that what Africa needed was the development of scientifically literate citizens who could manipulate their environment in rational terms in order to get results.

“In teaching science, in Africa we must consider the science and technology that the local people are doing and integrate the knowledge from the learners’ socio-cultural environment,” he said.

Earlier, the director of the centre, Prof. Peter Okebukola, presented the policy brief project that would guide policy makers across the world in taking sustainable action on the preservation of African cultural heritage.