By: Mohamed Jalloh
Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio has arrived in Burkina Faso for a one-day working visit aimed at strengthening ties between the two West African nations.
“I arrived in Burkina Faso for a one-day working visit,” Bio announced on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Captain Ibrahim Traoré, Head of State of Burkina Faso, welcomed me enthusiastically. I look forward to a very successful visit.”
The overriding aim of the visit is to achieve the objective of the Economic Community of West African states by way of impressing and urging the Junta leader in Burkina Faso, to hasten moves to ensure a return to constitutional rule, and hand over power to the civilian political leadership.
President Bio is in a unique position to share his experience with the military leader.
This is true because he himself led a military government in 1996, but was magnanimous and democratically minded to hand over power to the civilian government of late former President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah.
Moreover, President Bio will meet with the Head of State of Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, to strengthen the fraternal relations between Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso.
During the visit, the leaders discussed regional challenges and reinforce their shared commitment to regional security, development and unity of West Africa. Captain Ibrahim Traore is courtesy of two coups in less than nine months – January and September 2022.
Interestingly this is commonality he shares with President as both leaders played key roles in two coups in their respective countries.
Captain Ibrahim Traore became the world’s youngest head of state in September 2022, when he and other junior military officers ousted Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Henri Damiba, who had also ascended to the presidency through a coup in January 2022.
Justifying why they were removing Damiba from office, Traore said in a televised address on October 1, 2022 that the embattled head of state had failed to tackle the perennial problem of insurgency.
Damiba, 41, had been ousted by Traore, who was seven years his junior and two positions lower than him in the military chain of command.
After serving in relatively junior positions in Burkina Faso’s military, Traore’s major stride came in 2014, when he was deployed to Mali as a soldier under the United Nations peacekeeping mission programme, MINUSMA.
Soldiers within Burkina Faso’s military told the country’s Radio Omega in the past that Traore, during his deployment to Mali, “showed bravery.”
Aged 26 at the time, Traore overcame a “complex attack” by militant extremists in the northern Timbuktu region.
The visit underscores the fraternal relations between Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso, with both leaders expected to discuss various bilateral issues.
In 2022, Sierra Leone exported $23.9k worth of goods to Burkina Faso, including packaged medicaments ($12.1k), rubber pipes ($4.92k), and centrifuges ($2.91k). However, over the past five years, exports from Sierra Leone to Burkina Faso have declined significantly, decreasing at an annualized rate of 28.3% from $126k in 2017 to $23.9k in 2022.
The Sahel country plunged into political turmoil on September 30 after a group of officers decided to remove Damiba due to his inability to deal with a worsening armed uprising, dissolved the transitional government and suspended the constitution.
