Honourable Dr. Bernadette Lahai is currently a temporary teacher at the Department of Sociology and Agricultural Extension, University of Njala, Sierra Leone. She has been a member of the Parliament of Sierra Leone since 2000 to date and is the immediate past leader of the minority, the first woman to occupy the position. Lahai’s professional career has covered the fields of agricultural extension, education, politics, international development, human rights, gender awareness and women’s equal participation in development. She worked for more than a decade as a research assistant and research officer at the Institute of Agricultural Extension (Njala Agricultural Research Center) and was a social and gender expert in the Sierra Leone Vision 2025 Project.
She has undertaken a variety of consultancy roles on policy development and worked for many development partners nationally and internationally, including the FAO Women’s Project. Lahai has a PhD in Agricultural Extension and Rural Development from the University of Reading in England, a Post Graduate Diploma in Education with Distinction, an M.Sc. in agriculture from Njala University and a BA in geography and rural sociology from Fourah Bay College – University of Sierra Leone. [email protected]
