The Acting Vice-Chancellor and Principal, of the University of Sierra Leone, Professor Aiah Lebbie has assumed office today, 26th February 2024. He was appointed under Section 8(5) of The Universities Act No 5 2021 by the Hon Minister of Technical and Higher Education with immediate effect. His roles and responsibilities are spelt out in subsection 4 paragraphs (a-e) of the said Act.
In addition, he is required to initiate the process of recruiting a substantive Vice-Chancellor and Principal, after the requisite consultations.
Professor Lebbie has assumed office at the time our newly admitted students to USL are waiting to matriculate while graduating students are waiting for the 2024 Congregation. These are in addition to other pressing matters that need the approval or leadership of the Office of VC&P USL. Some of these activities are the finalization and approval of the 2024 budget and the payment of salaries and allowances for February 2024. He had a brief meeting with the Acting Registrar, the Acting Finance Director and a cross-section of the staff at the Secretariat for familiarization and to discuss his utmost agenda for the short period he is going to be acting as the VC&P.
Top of his agenda is USL going digital. He wants to ensure that the USL website is highly professional and very active. In that light, the website should be populated with staff profiles, research works, departmental activities, and important collegiate information. He is going to see that every relevant information meant for university rankings is provided on the USL website. He also wants to see that lecturers and students access internet facilities on campus as part of the digital migration. He is prepared to source funds to support the digitalization process. He wants to organize the 2024 Congregation to be one of the best in Africa. To him, Congregation is an event of rebranding and marketing the university. He will be meeting each of the DVCs on the respective campuses this week to discuss his vision and the preparations for matriculation and congregation.
WHO IS PROFESOR AIAH LEBBIE?
Prof. Aiah Lebbie (PhD, COR), was born in Jaiama Nimikoro in the Kono District in 1964, and attended the Roman Catholic Primary School in Tongo Field, before completing his secondary education (Form 1 to Upper Six) at Christ the King College in Bo. He went on to obtain his Bachelor of Science degree in Education and Biological Sciences from the University of Sierra Leone’s Njala University College in 1989. Before this, he spent a year working as a Research Assistant on the epidemiology of river blindness (Onchocerciasis) under the supervision of Prof. Aiah Gbakima. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a Research and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Biological Sciences at Njala University. At the end of this period, he was offered a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue his postgraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), where he obtained a Master of Science (MS) in Conservation Biology & Sustainable Development in 1995. He further pursued a PhD, which he completed in 2001 in the field of Forestry with specialization in Forest and Wildlife Ecology from the same university. The field supervision of his PhD work was done by Prof. Norman Cole (Botany Department) at Fourah Bay College (University of Sierra Leone). Upon obtaining his PhD, Prof. Aiah Lebbie returned to Sierra Leone in January of 2002 to continue his career at Njala University, where he headed the Department of Biological Sciences for 8 years, as well as serving as acting head of the Department of Wildlife, Ecotourism and Biodiversity Conservation for 2 years. In 2019-2020, he served as Dean of the School of Environmental Sciences at Njala University. He stepped down from his deanship position following a narrow vote loss in his quest to become the DVC of the Njala Campus. Between 2013 to present, Prof. Lebbie served on numerous university and national committees, including Faculty Representative to the University Court, member of the Committee of Deans, member of the Curriculum Review Committee, Finance and General Purposes, Infrastructure Committee, Restructuring Committee, Sierra Leone Bio-banking Governing Board, Sierra Leone Ethics and Scientific Review Board, University Statutory Budgetary Committee, Sierra Leone Urban Research Center Board, and presently as Chair of the University Scoring Committee. Between 2005 and 2012, Prof. Lebbie served as Country Directory for the Environmental Foundation for Africa in Liberia and was responsible for the implementation of a myriad of projects, through support from UNHCR, UNDP and Stichting Vluchteling – The Dutch Refugee Agency (SV), which assisted displaced persons and refugees from Cote d’Ivoire. The activities bordered on environmental sustainability, school rehabilitations and sustainable livelihood options. Following the outbreak of the Ebola virus disease in Sierra Leone, Prof. Lebbie pivoted Njala University to spearhead a collaborative agreement with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to conduct ecological surveillance and molecular diagnostics of viral hemorrhagic fever viruses in bats and other small mammals as its Principal Investigator since 2016. This collaboration resulted in the co-discovery of the Angola-type Marburg virus in the Egyptian fruit bat for the first time and definitively established the Rousettus bat as the host for the Marburg virus. He is actively involved in building capacity in the university for surveillance of hemorrhagic fever viruses and has a team of young and talented researchers who are active in the field and competent in molecular laboratory diagnostics. He is also collaborating with the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston (USA) for the study of mosquito-borne viruses, as well as in its D43 Training program. Three of his laboratory staff have participated in advanced training at UTMB, another two participated in training at CDC, plus two additional staff received training at the Pasteur Institute in Senegal on mosquito taxonomic and surveillance work. He has also collaborated with the Milwaukee School of Engineering,
and Lawrence University in Wisconsin (USA) on capacity-building initiatives at Njala University. Prof. Lebbie is actively involved in teaching and supervising undergraduate and graduate students, especially in areas that border his research interests. The main thrust of his career concentrates on human interactions with natural ecosystems, and understanding the consequences on our society in the Upper Guinean Forests of Liberia and Sierra Leone. His academic research and teaching interests include the biodiversity and cultural anthropology of sacred groves; tropical plant ecology; Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP) and ethnobotany of medicinal plants; ecological surveillance and molecular diagnosis of hemorrhagic fever viruses in Sierra Leone; ecotourism & protected area management; environmental sustainability in conflict and post-conflict situations (displacement and refugees); and understanding the context within which health, disease, traditional knowledge and medicinal plants converge in providing wellness. Prof. Lebbie is also the Head/Curator of the National Herbarium of Sierra Leone, and his interest in botany has led to active collaboration with the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew (UK), This collaboration has resulted in several discoveries. In 2014, he collected a herbarium specimen of rattan (Eresmopatha drandsfieldii) under the collection number (Lebbie, 2590), with accompanying fruits. The fruits of this Palmae turned out to be the first known collection of this specimen to be brought to the attention of the scientific community, even though the plant had been described for over one hundred years without its flowers and fruits. In the same year, he also collected a specimen of Araceae (Lebbie, 2601) known as Stylochaeton pilosus, which had been recorded in the early 1940s but had not been collected again for nearly 70 years, and turned out to be a very rare specimen. In 2017, Prof. Lebbie collected the first known specimen of Lebbiea grandiflora (Lebbie, 2721) in the family Podostemaceae, which was named after him as its discoverer, and the first such African genus of Podostemaceae to be described in over 30 years. This discovery was published in 2018 in the journal Plos One and resulted in TV interviews in the UK as well as an interview on the “BBC Focus on Africa” program. With funding from Defra and Kew, he is presently studying the Sierra Leone indigenous coffee known as Coffea stenophylla (Rubiaceae) under a proposed Sierra Leone Tropical Important Plant Areas (TIPAs) program in two range areas; Kasewe Forest Reserve and Kambui Hills Forest Reserve. His insight into the ecology of Sierra Leone has led to numerous collaborations with students, national academics, and foreign scientists and students. He is actively involved in collaborative research, and past field works on environmental issues relating to forest livelihoods, human displacement, wildlife conservation, biotechnology and mangrove conservation have taken him to several African countries including Liberia, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, The Gambia, Ghana, Burundi, Niger, Senegal, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria and Burkina Faso.
