By Ndey Sowe
On Saturday, June 21, 2025, President Adama Barrow, the Chancellor of the University of Applied Science, Engineering and Technology (USET), officially inaugurated the new USET Brikama Campus and presided over the graduation of the first cohort of engineers trained entirely in The Gambia.
The new campus, funded by the World Bank’s Africa Centers of Excellence (ACE) Impact for Development Project, features 12 classrooms, 5 studios, 28 offices, a 250-seat auditorium, a conference room, 15 modern engineering laboratories, and 4 workshops—specifically for Welding, Automotive, Mechanical, and Theory of Machines—equipped with cutting-edge tools and machinery.
The graduation ceremony marked a significant milestone as the first batch of engineering degree students completed their studies locally, with support from faculty at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. In his keynote address, President Barrow described the event as “spectacularly special,” as it combined the commissioning of the College of Science and Engineering (CoSE) with the first convocation of homegrown engineers.
“I feel highly honored and privileged to preside over this historic moment in our national chain of sustainable development priorities,” President Barrow stated. “This occasion not only reflects the remarkable development of our tertiary education sector but also represents a new chapter in our ambition to transform The Gambia into a knowledge-driven economy.”
