Monrovia, Liberia (November 6, 2026) – A trade delegation from the U.S. State of Maryland recently met with University of Liberia President Dr. Layli Maparyan and members of her leadership team to discuss a potential partnership with the university.

Comprising leaders of diverse businesses from Maryland, the delegation visited Liberia Nov. 4 in hopes of establishing partnerships with different Liberian government agencies and ministries in areas including tourism, refuse removal and recycling, mechanized farming, and facilitating the exportation of pineapple to the United States, particularly Maryland.

The delegation’s singular major presentation to the university focused on possibly introducing higher education to JiNi, a biomedical and information technology company designed to personalize nurse skills training to increase clinical competency and high scores on national nursing certificate exams.

The delegation noted a likelihood of signing a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Health that could lead to bringing JiNi to Liberia, which would train nurses in Liberia, including in rural areas.

Further, a team from Kirk Goode, which is part of the Maryland Trade Delegation, is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Monrovia City Corporation, and also work with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and others on addressing waste energy products in Liberia. 

The meeting on Capitol Hill campus was followed by a dinner and networking event hosted by the Trade Mission at The House in Sinkor, bringing together business and government officials. The Maryland Trade Delegation was due to depart Liberia on Friday, November 6.

University of Liberia President Dr. Layli Maparyan welcomed the delegation led by Councilwoman Wala Blegay from the State of Maryland to the University of Liberia.

At the meeting, Dr. Maparyan pledged to spend some time introducing the delegation to the university, which she said represents the higher education sector in the Republic of Liberia.

She said they would possibly talk about the higher education sector more broadly in Liberia, and think about how that intersects with the things that the State of Maryland would like to do with Liberia.

“I know we first talked at the University of Liberia [Alumni] Association in the Americas meeting. We met, and we envisioned this day when we would be able to sit together at a table and bring Liberia together with the State of Maryland,” Dr. Maparyan reflected. 

She said their meeting on UL Capitol Hill campus consummated that aspiration, describing it as wonderful. 

The head of delegation, Madam Wala Blegay, Council Member At-Large of Prince George’s County Council of Maryland, said it was both an honor and an inspiration to meet Dr. Maparyan, who hails from the United States and is familiar with where the delegation came from. 

Council Member Blegay said her delegation focused on one particular proposal because it wants to see the possibility of getting a memorandum of understanding or some sort of beginning of a relationship with Juxtopia that comes out of Maryland. 

“They have a project at Morgan State, and they’ve been focusing actually on HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] to get a training program,” said Council Member Blegay. 

Following the team members’ brief introductions, Dr. Jayfus T. Doswell, President of AI-Juxtopia Intelligent Nurse Instructor, gave a presentation about his product, JiNi.

He said the company is designed to personalize nurse skills training anywhere, anytime, and at any pace to increase clinical competency and high scores on national nursing certificate exams.

Driven by his interest in how human beings learn, down to being in the mechanical region of the brain, pre-deformed cortex retention, and also an understanding of pedagogy for children and pedagogy for adults, Dr. Doswell said he established the company in 2001.

He said JiNi was created to autonomously train student nurses, based on his 399-page Ph.D. dissertation of 2005, to develop skill proficiency and intravenous and intramuscular skills, for example, in nursing, as well as clinical judgment.

He said his team develops full electromechanical systems, software systems, and optical systems, all within the lab in Baltimore.  

In their controlled study, Dr. Doswell said he found that students take more time with an artificial intelligence instructor, but the accuracy increases. 

He said it means that the student is paying attention to JiNi and not overlooking the steps, and they are not rushing through them. Contrasting this with students without JiNi – with a preceptor, he said they may rush through the steps but make more mistakes. 

“So, from a concentration standpoint, JiNi is proven as an effective intervention in that case,” he said. 

For the research, Dr. Doswell said that if money is not available, his company raises the money, adding that there’s a Fogarty Institute Center that funds a lot of the research under the National Institutes of Health (NIH) between the United States and other countries. 

“So, advancing training and clinical skills, evaluating the capability to instruct cognitive and critical thinking, like clinical judgment, JiNi has the capability to evaluate clinical skill competency, and in the United States, to help the students pass the NCLEX,” he said.

Beyond passing the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX), he said JiNi helps students gain that skill proficiency so that they go to the hospital environment, the health care center with the highest quality, highly skilled training, representing your university at the optimal level. 

Regarding the values of this product, Dr. Doswell spoke of decreased learning time, increased conceptual and psychomotor retention, very limited need for proctors for repetitive practice, delivering on-time, real-time tutoring, and learning and retention outside of the school environment. 

He added that a student nurse independently practices, continuously gets better, and then performs that quality care in the hospital.

His presentation addressed a concern about how the curriculum of a certain university gets into the knowledge base of JiNi, disclosing that they have made their own learning and performance management system. 

“We created our own for artificial intelligence, and this captures all the tasks that a student would need to learn from,” he said.

Dr. Doswell explained that the way JiNi works is that the student nurse wears augmented reality head-mounted displays that are developed and manufactured in Baltimore, competing against Microsoft HoloLens and Meta glasses. 

In Magic Leap, he said they have a patent on armbands that can track psychomotor movement in real time, and then they help JiNi evaluate how well a student nurse performs a clinical procedure for each step of the test. 

Also speaking, Dr. Akilah Lane, Deputy Director of International Affairs, Africa Relations, State of Maryland, said it was a blessing coming into a foreign country on business, and you realized that you have an assignment beyond just the paperwork. 

“We have been moving at lightning speed with this, and it really is by the grace of God. This is the first time that we’ve had an opportunity to move the MOU forward this quickly. But more importantly, this MOU is an extension; it’s an upgrade of our historic relationship with Liberia,” said Dr. Lane. 

She disclosed that the State of Maryland had a county-specific MoU with Bong and Maryland Counties in Liberia, but it has now been upgraded from the two counties to the entire nation, creating an opportunity to talk with the University of Liberia about partnerships.

According to her, the MoU was signed by the Governor and the foreign minister in June. 

“The core focus for education is to identify university and college partnerships. I don’t know how much you know about the history, but we originally had an MoU with just Maryland County and Bong County,” said Dr. Lane. 

In the MoU, Dr. Lane said her goal is to connect – whether it’s public-private partnerships. For the University of Liberia, she said they want to figure out how to get students involved in this plan.

Dr. Wunmi Duyile, Executive Director of Legacy Premier Foundation, said they anticipate bringing more businesses from Maryland under the leadership of Council Member Blegay to see all that Liberia has to offer. 

Dr. Duyile expressed a hope that the great meetings they held across different agencies will not resort to “no action, talk only” or NATO, a saying of the president that people had reminded them of.

“So, we want to make sure that we do not have any NATO, and we look forward to really making the business be more than just the conversations and the meetings that we’ve had this week. We look forward to actually taking that action,” Duyile said.