Founder edUKate Mauritania: We provide a training framework of international standards for industrial and energy personnel and companies in Mauritania

The training and education centre “edUKate Mauritania”, is a joint venture between Mauritania’s Maurinvest/Maurilog Group and Britain’s TVET UK, to be launched in 2021.
One of the main objectives of the joint venture is to establish an industrial health and safety training school in Mauritania, with the aim of providing the growing oil and gas industry with standard quality human resources.
Last February, edUKate Mauritania organised the first NEBOSH training in Mauritania for occupational health and safety in Nouakchott.
In this context, TAQA conducted an interview with the founder of edKate Mauritania about the centre’s objectives in strengthening local content.

TAQA: Why did you choose Mauritania to launch your first office in the sub-region?

In around 2015, my company TVET UK, won a tender from the Mauritanian government to create the Higher Institute of English in Nouakchott, as a ‘build operate and transfer’ project.  It was the first British Mauritanian collaboration in education ever!  There were 13 British citizens living in Mauritania at that point and we brought in 15 English teachers and doubled the British population of Mauritania overnight.

I enjoyed the project and explored doing more work in the country.  I was frustrated, there was no by natural business support between our two countries so tried to do something about it, so I worked on the formation of the Mauritainian British Business Council. Through the MBBC, I met many Mauritainian businesspeople and became more familiar with the needs of the country from a human resource capacity standpoint. I saw the opportunities to do something. We had a sales office in Algeria, and I wanted to do something more adventurous in the region around training and I met Mohamed Abdellahi Yaha owner of Maurilog, who was keen to do something with education and quickly realised we shared a vision and most importantly values. This is the reason we founded edUKate Mauritania. I have worked on many new institutes around the world, but Mauritania is the first one to be separately branded and for us to retain an ongoing interest in operation.

TAQA: What are the main axes of your services?

Essentially the vision is to bring British and international standards of education to the Mauritanian people to help them prepare for what will be a huge change in the country’s development over next 10 years with gas and renewables. That could be helping people improve their English, bringing high-quality business courses to the corporate sector, or specialist international certification, such as NEBOSH. We also send people to the UK for study. We are literally a gateway to UK education for any Mauritanian.

TAQA: Do your services target specific areas of the private sector?

Yes, at the moment, as we are fairly new so scaling up, we are targeting the key industries for Mauritania around energy and mining, particularly around gas and hydrogen. We have brought international certification that will allow local companies to develop and become competitive against international companies in, for example, tenders with IOCs and international investors. We can also help international companies to fulfil their local content obligations. My plan is to branch out into areas such as financial services, general business, training, hospitality and tourism, healthcare in 2023. Not forgetting that underpinning, all of this is English language training, whether that is general English business, English, English to prepare students to study abroad (IELTS), or simple access to conversation classes.

TAQA: In the Mauritanian context, what are the values ​​that you could bring to the private sector?

In terms of values, our number one priority is to upskill anyone who is interested with quality training. However, on a more practical level, we will bring international standards of training and assessment which will allow companies and individuals to demonstrate credible development to clients or future employers.

TAQA: Do you collaborate with the government in the implementation of the national local content development strategy?

EdUKate was officially launched during the Covid period with the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Sidi Ould Salem as keynote speaker. We also had the Mauritainian Ambassador in London and the British Ambassador in Mauritania speaking. I have always received positive feedback from any government officials, Mauritanian or British, I have spoken to about EdUKate. EdUKate, does have some planned training in English with some government agencies.

In addition, through my company, TVET UK we have worked with the Government, Ministry of Economy and education ministries mainly, for the last eight years starting with the Higher Institute of English in 2016. I have available investment to build schools, professional training centres, train teachers, develop girls’ education and strengthen the state offering.  My day job in the UK involves raising sustainable, low interest funds and philanthropic investment from sources that support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help developing countries strengthen their education system. 

With MBBC, I am in constant contact with the government through various ministries and related to developing British Mauritanian collaboration.

TAQA: You have organised training sessions so far, what are your first impressions?

We have brought three sets of international training so far in the last three months, with more planned in July as well as everyday English training for corporates, embassies, and individuals.  The most recent is NEBOSH training.  We have run 6 different NEBOSH courses to more than 100 delegates and will bring the trainer back in July to run the much-desired NEBOSH courses.  These are absolutely crucial to develop Mauritanian capability allow local content to thrive and allow people to have great careers. We have brought in the number one UK training company for NEBOSH so we know we have the best training possible available in Mauritania.

My impressions of the courses are that they could not have gone any better.  The edUKate team have done a great job to put these courses on and the delegates feedback has been fantastic.  I also noted the engagement of the delegates. With 08.30 start and a finish around 18.00 or later there was no drop off of participation, concentration and no one left early, everyone was contributing to the end.  This is of course credit to our tutor who is an expert with more than 30 years’ experience of teaching NEBOSH. It was a similar story for our earlier courses around transportation of dangerous goods by sea, road and air. We have trained staff from many major Mauritanian companies such as SMH, Sogeco, Maurilog, ACT Shipping and others leading the great revolution in Mauritania’s industrial development.

TAQA: Do you already have an annual training plan in place?

We have a clear strategy naturally, but we have purchased a building in Nouakchott close to the American embassy and we are currently refurbishing it to open next year.  Once we have this four story building with many classrooms, e-learning centre, cafe etc… we will really push forward with training. In the meantime, we will seek to offer international standard courses like this and of course regular English training for everyone in our temporary facilities

TAQA: Can you tell us about your vision in Mauritania, in the short, medium and long term?

For edUKate it will be to establish ourselves in our new building offering high quality international training and English, with a British and local staff, once this is achieved I think there is scope to open a vocational training academy teaching practical industrial skills like construction, engineering, mechanical courses etc… and finally I would love to open a British school in Mauritania.

I want this to be the go-to training centre for all the big companies and government in Mauritania like the companies we have worked with like SMH, Sogeco, Magma, ACT Shipping and Maurilog whose staff now have recognised international qualifications. We want to build on this and offer qualifications and training based around renewable, particularly around hydrogen which is a very exciting development for Mauritania. Just like with the gas there is a strong British involvement in the hydrogen so we are well placed to deliver training and assist companies to meet their local content needs.

For me through my main role in the UK, I have hundreds of millions of dollars of Sustainable Development Goal related funding and I can bring to this country to really be able to help thousands of Mauritanian children to learn in decent, safe quality facilities, with up to date curriculum delivered by well trained and capable teachers. It is possible to create a quality revolution in Mauritanian education and I am ready to do this.  We are working with other countries in Africa to do this and it is possible here too.