By: Haja Hawa Koroma
During the weekly Press conference held on Thursday 9th June 2022 at the Ministry of Information and Communications, Youyi Building, the issues addressed were based on the President’s travels to Kenya and the Census results that were announced.
According to the Media Officer Lamin Sheriff, the President was invited by his colleague and counterpart H. E Hon. Rukiata, President of Kenya.
The President, H. E Julius Maada Bio, was invited to speak on the International Peace Keeping Day of the United Nations and was also invited as a guest of honor for the Kenyatamaradaka day, a day that symbolizes Independence Day to the Kenyans.
Being that both countries share a similar history on how they gained independence, the president of Kenya saw it as an honor to celebrate the day with President Bio.
Though the President went to Kenya as an invitee for these events, he saw it as an opportunity to sign various Memoranda of understanding between Sierra Leone and the Government of Kenya.
Before the census was started, the Kenya Government donated Twenty Thousand laptops power bank for the digital census that was conducted.
Kenya was the first country in Africa to have conducted a digital census and the completion of their census proved to be a success.
Many other African countries had wanted to copy from them and have also extended invitation for their equipment and knowledge to be shared among African Nations for the collection of credible data through the use of these gadgets and Sierra Leone was one of the African Countries to have benefited from this.
During the peace keeping in Sierra Leone, the Kenya Government had sent some troops to help Sierra Leone with the peace keeping movement, sadly four of the soldiers from the Kenya troops that were sent to serve the country died while in service.
So the President also used this visit as an opportunity to thank the Kenya Government for their help during that period and to also sympathize with them for their loss which Sierra Leone should have done a long time ago.
The president signed a Memorandum of joint cooperation of agreement.
He also signed a Memorandum of understanding on political and economic diplomacy as Sierra will be constructing the first diplomatic center in the country, so the Kenya Government is interested in learning how Sierra Leone works in diplomacy.
The Minister of trade also signed a Memorandum of Understanding on trade and investment between both countries.
This will help to establish a formal and flexible framework between the participants in order to expand trade and development cooperation and to foster scientific technologies, collaboration for business developments, strengthen communications and to boost economy and development for job provisions so that both parties will benefit with full cooperation from each other.
A Memorandum of Understanding was also signed for the Tourism Sector since Kenya is one of the African Countries that mostly attracts tourists to their sites and this sector generates a lot of money for the Kenya Nation.
So a Memorandum of Understanding was signed so as to share ideas with the Kenya Government to show their unique selling points and to share idea on how Sierra Leone will be able to improve in the sector.
According to the Media Officer, these are some of the reasons as to why the President visited Kenya, thus his visit is to encourage other nations to bring developments to Sierra Leone.
The Statistician General of Stats SL, Prof. Osman Sankoh highlighted key issues as proof of the credibility of the Census results. He said that there has been a lot of debate surrounding the census and he and his team will not give up in trying to clear the doubts of Sierra Leoneans.
He mentioned that they still stand by what was announced as the process that was used to conduct the census is a reliable process therefore the results are credible.
He encourages Sierra Leoneans to stop politicizing everything especially national matters like census for example, because these matters are for the good of the general public.
