Sierra Leone Telegraph: 17 September 2022:
The outstandingly hardworking Mayor of Freetown, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr will be speaking at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers 2022 event in New York next week. She will be speaking about the importance of the “Power of Community and Collaboration” in achieving global goals.
Speaking to the Sierra Leone Telegraph, the relentlessly focussed Mayor of Freetown who has attracted tens of millions of dollars of investments to Sierra Leone’s capital to transform the city, said she will also be speaking at other events on climate change whilst in the USA, hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Adrienne Arsht Rockefeller Foundation and the Clinton Foundation.
“I will use these opportunities to share Freetown’s experiences, achievements and challenges as we seek to find innovative solutions to the impacts of Climate Change in our city, Freetown.
“The hosting organizations have supported us in various ways in our journey to address Climate Change and to #TransformFreetown with projects such as #FreetownTheTreeTown, the Wilberforce Market construction and the 3 Market Shade Cover project.
“It is my hope and expectation that next week’s engagements will lead to the release of additional resources and support for our city,” she said.
In another development, Mayor Aki-Sawyerr’s tremendous efforts in helping to build and grow the economy of Freetown is beginning to produce low-hanging fruits. She has established vital collaboration between young fashion designers in Freetown with designers in Italy’s Milan fashion centre as well as London markets.
Mayor Aki-Sawyerr says that the City Council’s innovative ‘TransformFreetown’ project, is about transforming lives; “and one of the interventions I am really excited about is the fashion collaboration under the Mayors Dialogue which is co-founded by myself and the Mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala.”
Supported by the Mayors Migration Council and ODI, this intervention will strengthen the Freetown fashion industry by giving opportunities to Freetown designers and garment makers to be exposed to the Milan and London fashion industries.
“I was in Milan with Mayor Giuseppe Sala in May this year where I met with the President of the Milan Fashion Council and discussed the implementation of the fashion collaboration. Today, I am thrilled that Marie Carroll of Bivamiks Designs, Mohamed Barrie of Fashion ONE SL and Emmanuel Edwards are in London learning from and sharing with Sierra Leone’s very own Fashion Icon Foday Dumbuya of LABRUM LONDON!! We are all excited about how this fashion collaboration will create new jobs in Freetown as the industry expands. It was great to have a zoom call with them all yesterday,” the enthusiastic and hardworking Mayor Aki-Sawyerr said, excitingly.
There is no mystery or mystification about our Mayor’s travels. They are publicised well in advance, with their purpose clearly spelled out. Hence the costs incurred are legitimate and justified; they are worth every cent from the public funds used to meet them.
Our Mayor is a go-getter, unlike our very notorious jet-setter President. His interminable peregrinations across the globe have yielded and will yield nothing. To expect his travels to transform lives in Freetown and elsewhere in the country is simply delusional.
Our President’s travels are a drain on our national purse, which gets emptier at every turn during his obsessive globetrotting, with no prospect whatsoever of getting it replenished. He talks only and does nothing, contrary to what he and his army of adulators keep telling us. By contrast, the Mayor is a thinker, talker and builder: she is intelligent, articulate and action-orientated. She has the attributes of a leader – those of a visionary fit to hold the highest political office in the land.
The choice between the Mayor and the current holder of that office is a stark one. Vote her into the office and get the change you want for our country. Keep the incumbent in place and drag our country ever so deeply into the state of national decline, disunity and incohesion characteristic of his presidency.
In my opinion, I think that the Mayor’s visit is a good idea for the betterment of Sierra Leone. However, the most important issue regarding the Country’s Tourism that must be addressed in her visit is sanitation. There is need for some serious cleanup throughout the City. Lastly, a clean environment produces healthy Citizens.