Empowering the Teachers (ETT), launched at MIT in 2011, has become a catalyst for reforming engineering education in Nigerian universities. The program invites postdoctoral-level Nigerian academics to spend a semester immersed in MIT’s teaching and research environment before returning home to implement new methods and inspire systemic change. To date, 96 fellows have completed the program, each bringing back refined pedagogical approaches and a broadened vision for engineering instruction.
Amir Bature, a senior lecturer at Bayero University in Kano and a fall 2019 MIT-ETT fellow, recalls, “The first thing I learned at MIT is that every course needs a clear objective. If a student passes a course, they should also be able to use their knowledge to ultimately work in the industry as an engineer. It’s about more than just passing an exam.” His observation points to a fundamental shift from Nigeria’s traditional British-style university system, where grades hinge on a single final examination and practical engineering work is often delayed until the final year.
Bature adopted MIT’s continuous assessment model, integrating weekly problem sets, labs, and design projects into his courses. In his programming classes, lectures were paired with laboratory sessions in which students applied Python coding to create design simulations. This approach yielded tangible results: two of his students, Khadija Garo and Ruqayyah Nabage, developed enhancements for the Nigerian auto rickshaw, or keke. They added a tracker to monitor oil and fuel levels and a GPS navigation system to improve route efficiency. Discussions with an investor about seed funding for production are already underway.
“Being able to now teach in a way that takes students from theory to practice and seeing them solve real problems is something huge,” Bature notes. His experience reflects ETT’s emphasis on bridging academic concepts with industry-relevant applications.
ETT faculty director Tayo Akinwande, professor of engineering and computer science at MIT, underscores the program’s hands-on nature. Fellows audit two MIT classes that parallel courses they have taught in Nigeria, enabling direct comparison of instructional methods. They also gain skills in selecting research topics, crafting successful grant proposals, and collaborating across institutions.
David Obada, a spring 2019 fellow, found this training pivotal. While working remotely from The Atlantic Technological University in Ireland, he coordinated outreach for the Africa Centre for Excellence on New Pedagogies in Engineering Education at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria. With World Bank support, his team developed peer-facilitated tutorials in material science to enhance collaborative learning. Their work was presented in June 2023 at the American Society for Engineering Education conference. In Ireland, Obada is now creating a program for Nigerian postgraduate students to audit project-based learning methods — an initiative he attributes directly to his MIT experience.
Funding from TotalEnergies and coordination by the MIT Center for International Studies (CIS) have sustained ETT’s operations. Evi Ifekwa, executive director of People and Country Services for TotalEnergies EP Nigeria, explains, “Our motivation to get involved and sustain involvement has been identifying the opportunity to contribute to the modernization of engineering education in Nigerian universities.” She highlights the emergence of female STEM leaders such as Toyin Odutola, a 2020 fellow who created Nigeria’s first hydrate loop, and Ronke Sakpere, a 2022 fellow equipping women with programming skills.
ETT managing director Yoav Danenburg observes that fellows develop a determined mindset during their semester at MIT. “Weekly meetings and visits to MIT labs inspire our fellows to strive for change, and to very diligently push to implement what they’ve learned at MIT back at their home institutions — navigating local politics along the way,” he says.
Victor Odumuyiwa, part of the inaugural 2013 cohort, now directs NITHub at the University of Lagos. Over the past decade, fellows have advanced into leadership roles, shaping policy and engineering practice. During the Covid-19 pandemic, they collaborated to design an emergency ventilator toolkit using locally available materials. Odumuyiwa remarks, “I’ve definitely seen the birth of an active fellows network. We can have a very big impact in the industry in the next five to 10 years and deeply shift its course.”