By: Ilyasa Baa
The recent visit of four Senators from France to the Parliament of Sierra Leone may yield fruits as they expressed their excitement over the establishment of the Sierra Leone Embassy in Paris.
This is the first time our Parliament is being officially visited by French Senators and an invitation extended to the Leader of the ECOWAS Parliament, Hon Sidi Tunis and others to visit France for further arrangements towards the opening of the Embassy as well as setting the stage for bilateral engagement between the two countries in the areas of Tourism, Forestry and Agriculture.
The Senators were said to have had an easy ride with the Vice President, Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh who hosted them with no language barrier. ” The Senators were excited over the call for us to create an Embassy in France and engender private sector growth in Sierra Leone”, Imran Sillah from the Strategic Communication Unit at the Ministry of Information and Communications maintained. He stressed that the plan tabled before the Vice President would benefit the country a lot with value addition for the private sector, adding that trade and investments formed part of their discussion.
The opening of an Embassy in France has been welcome news to business people in Sierra Leone as well as Sierra Leoneans residing in that part of Europe. With the opening of that Embassy, Sierra Leoneans who have been faced with the burden of travelling to neighbouring Guinea to do the paperwork for them to travel to France will soon start doing everything at home.
It could be recalled that the establishment of an Embassy in Turkey by the Bio-led administration was criticized because the cost implication was huge for the government of Sierra Leone. Nonetheless, Sierra Leoneans in Nordic European precisely Finland and Sweden have been clamoring for a Consulate to be established to strengthen bilateral engagements to foster potential growth in their country of origin.
In the past, one Sierra Leonean in the diaspora that knocked on doors for the Government of Sierra Leone to establish a Consulate in Sweden was the late musician Amadu Jah of blessed memory.
Over the years, another musician by the name Sorie Obai Kamara based in Finland has been encouraging the government of Sierra Leone to open a Consulate in Helsinki which he believed would benefit the country in diverse ways.