How to inspire Tanzanian youth into science and technology

We live in a world that’s science-oriented. In recent years, Tanzania, like many parts of the African continent has embarked on different initiatives to ensure that passion in science subjects among children grows. These initiatives have seen a rise in the number of innovative ideas from talented youth.

An example of such leaps being made in the world of science can be seen in the work of Angelus Albinus, a talented youth with a passion for science and innovation. Through different channels Angelus has propelled his talent to greater heights.

Along with other youth, Angelus took the path of innovation under STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics). This group of youth came up with different projects targeting to solve community problems. Angelus made a smart device that chases away insects by voice control activation, a project which he believes will help to reduce the number of diseases mostly caused by insects in the society such as Malaria.

“I am happy to be a part of this since I get an opportunity to practice things I have learned theoretically, and above all I get a chance to innovate things that I know will be of help to my community like this device which I know will be of great use to many people,” he explains proudly.

Eric Pamphil, 17, is another young innovator and student who after experiencing problems with water supply at their school decided to come up with a wind powered water pump which will help in the whole process of accessing water.

“After doing several researches we realised that in the Northern part of our country we have enough wind currents which would be suitable for this kind of investment. The pumps can help to pump water for irrigational use, farming and also for other domestic purposes. This experience has taught me so many things, some include the fact that we have many talents out there which need to be nurtured and guided in order to be turned into big and successful ideas and projects that can benefit our whole nation,” Says Eric

Boot camp

Angelus and Eric are among the youth who attended a STEM youth boot camp, a program organised for the last three years by Projekt Inspire, a youth-based social enterprise that aims at creating career awareness and lightening career paths to youth. Since it was established four years ago, they have been working to unleash youth’s potential by actively involving them in making informed career decisions and career consultancy including running community outreaches based on different disciplines.

Masoud Mnonji, a program officer at Projekt Inspire says they run several projects and activities which have been divided in two parts; inspire STEM and inspire health. However, he says some of the programs which are more active now are the ones involving Science, Technology, Engineer and Mathematics.

“Raising STEM stars is a sub-project or activity designed for 3 to 13-year-old children. It has fun-based integrated learning activities for children of this age, we want them to develop interest and love science from a young age. We have sessions which we run twice a month, public events where anyone can bring in their children for training and all these trainings are guided by our education system and curricular except that we add some simple experiments to make it more educative and fun. We also have sessions every week in some schools we have contracts with, we now work with four schools including St Joseph school of leadership and Al-Muntazir, both the boys and girls schools, we use simple tools which are locally available in our teaching process,” says Masoud.

According to the program officer, Projekt Inspire also runs another project for youth called Youth STEM Boot Camp conducted once a year targeting secondary school students aged between 13 to 21 years of age. “In this special program we recruit children who have ideas around STEM area, those who have innovative ideas and want to transform those ideas into reality. We recruit them from all over the country from both public and private schools,” he explains.

He further explained that STEM project based integrated learning for secondary schools is a sustainable project that aims at mainstreaming the project-based learning and integrated learning to complement the formal secondary schools’ science and mathematics curriculum. “This will unleash the students’ potential through integrating their classroom lessons into projects as a way of improving the quality of education, and consequently quality of graduates from secondary schools,” he explains.

According to Masoud, most curriculums in secondary schools are based only on theory, neglecting the practicability of things. This makes students only study for exams rather than understanding the context of the subject or particular topic. “Project-based learning will be based on introducing interactive projects to students in all levels of secondary schools allowing them to apply the theories in a practical manner. The goal is to trigger participation of students in the STEM field giving them an opportunity to learn about various career paths and develop interest in the field, boosting their creativity and research skills thus developing a well-rounded education essential to our country’s development.

He says through this platform they build capacity to the youth based on their ideas or innovations. “Having an idea can be one thing but if you don’t know how to transform it into something more meaningful can be a waste of time, that’s why we provide students with training so that they can be able to do analysis on their ideas and designs. We teach them to think on coming up with proper solutions to critical challenges surrounding our societies,” he says. Keeping track of the students they recruit is something that helps them be up-to-date on their progress. “You become part of us and we make sure to do a follow up on you and to give you a career guidance until we are sure that you can be able to stand on your own and those who are still growing we have prepared an incubation house where we make sure they come out more equipped and qualified innovators,” Masoud says.