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The Minister of Information and Civic Education, Chernor Bah, has highlighted Sierra Leone’s remarkable progress in empowering girls and women at United Nations CSW event in New York.
“In 2018, a girl born in Sierra Leone faced staggering odds,” he said at the CSW70. “She had nearly a 1 in 2 chance of becoming pregnant before age 19, almost a 1 in 2 chance of being married before 18, and only about a 1 in 3 chance of finishing school.”
He explained that President Julius Maada Bio’s government made a decision to change these outcomes. “If we wanted to become an inclusive, green, middle-income country by 2039, we had to change every single one of those outcomes,” Minister Bah emphasized. “And the smartest investment we could make with limited resources, was investing intentionally in girls and women.”
The government, according to him, started with education, allocating 22% of the national budget to education. “We introduced Free Quality School Education for every child, and free tertiary education for girls studying STEM,” Minister Bah said. “We achieved gender parity in school enrollment, and two years ago more girls enrolled in STEM in our universities than at any point in our country’s history.”
But education alone, he went on, was not enough. The government tackled barriers around it, ending the discriminatory ban on pregnant girls in schools and making radical inclusion a cornerstone of education policy. “,” Minister Bah noted.
“We also criminalized child marriage, holding anyone who facilitates it accountable,” he added. The government, he furthered, also passed a Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment law establishing a minimum 30% threshold for women in elective and appointive positions.
As Minister of Information and Civic Education, Minister Bah’s role is to ensure that girls are not just beneficiaries of policy but participants in shaping it. “Through town halls, civic engagement programs, and national dialogues, girls’ voices are increasingly shaping the policy direction of our country,” he said.
The results are real. Sierra Leone has recorded the fastest drop in maternal mortality in the world. “Today, a girl born in Sierra Leone is far more likely to stay in school, choose when and whom to marry, decide if and when to have children, go to university, and see women leaders who reflect her own future,” Minister Bah said.
“For Sierra Leone, investing in girls is not a policy choice. It is our development strategy,” the Minister emphasized. “And it is the clearest path we see to ending poverty and building an inclusive, green middle-income country by 2039.”
