The Media Reform Coordinating Group, with funding support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has collaborated with the Department of Mass Communication at Fourah Bay College to review the curriculum for journalism, media and communication in Sierra Leone.
The support extended by the MRCG to the Department of Mass Communication at the Fourah Bay University is aimed at promoting media professionalism by way of supporting media and journalism departments to affect reforms in their curricula.
In his statement at the review workshop at Culture Radio Complex-Grafton in Freetown, the National Coordinator for MRCG, Dr Francis Sowa, noted that the Secretariat is supporting the curriculum review process as a way of fulfilling one of the Department’s key mandates. He added that the curriculum review would be adopted by all media and journalism departments in all public universities and colleges, as all media stakeholders were fully in support.
“With support from our donor, NED, we want to congratulate the department on all their efforts in the review process in the last years and we will support them to the final stage of the process so as to contribute to producing journalists who will be professional in society,” Dr Sowa said.
Giving her response, the Head of the Department of Mass Communication, Dr Williette PRO James, stated that with the new review, the Department would now be transformed into a Faculty called Faculty of Communication, Media and Information Studies. She added that the review was in line with international universities’ best practices and that wider consultations had been done across the country in achieving it.
“We are grateful as a department to take the lead in reviewing the curriculum for media, journalism and communication which can be in all public universities with departments of communication and journalism across the country,” Dr James said.
Chairman for the Curriculum Review Committee at the University of Sierra Leone, Prof. Allyson Sesay thanked and appreciated the authorities of mass communication for the consultations so far. He advised them to make sure they follow the standard procedure of reviewing curriculum before presenting their final documents which would go through stages and processes in the University before implementation.
