Three Young Sierra Leonean Innovators Among The Twelve Global Winners of The Generation Unlimited Global imaGen Ventures Competition

In the just concluded imaGen Ventures global innovation competition, three young innovators from Sierra Leone that developed an offline database server that provides learning materials offline for young people without internet access are among the twelve global winners of the competition ahead of thousands of young innovators across more than 40 countries. They will receive mentoring and up to $16,000 in seed funding to enhance and develop their ideas.

Team Lorem consists of three young and brilliant Sierra Leonean innovators whose brilliant innovative ideas have made it possible for young people in Sierra Leone who don’t have access to the internet to learn Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math offline through their innovation Easy STEM Server which stores offline learning materials in mini portable database servers.

In Sierra Leone, some 84% of households lack internet access, thus limiting children and young people’s ability to connect and learn. Team Lorem saw this as a problem and decided to do something about it. Their offline database provides dozens of learning materials through Massive Open Online Stem Contents (MOOCs) to students without internet access. Because it is an offline database server, students’ access doesn’t need internet data. So far, 273 students studying engineering from one of Africa’s oldest universities, Fourah Bay College, have used and tested the server.

“With passion, determination, and the dream to improve livelihoods through innovations, many students enter into STEM fields. But this is often cut short by the hard realities such as what it costs to have quality and practical STEM education. We aim to solve the problem so that these dreams can be actualized. Our vision is to provide affordable, reliable, and quality access to organized STEM learning content for every STEM learner in the world.”