Alhaji Musa Timothy Kabbah, Sierra Leone’s Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation’s Minister, Alhaji Musa Timothy Kabbah has today Friday 28 June hosted a cross section of students from the Guinean Armed Forces Command and Staff College who had just ended a study tour in Sierra Leone.

According to the Ministry Directorate Strategic Communications, the forty-eight-man delegation is the third intake of the college and the visit to Sierra Leone was part of their requirement to gain field knowledge of a neighbouring country’s military and civil institutions.

“it is a very pleasant opportunity to have members of the Guinean Army visiting Sierra Leone … It is always a pleasure to have our brothers from Guinea among us”, Kabbah said. He said Sierra Leone and Guinea share bioIlogical, social and political nexus between the two countries.

“That is why Sierra Leone is very grateful to the people of the Republic of Guinea for very many reasons – a huge number of our population is actually originally from Guinea and Mali”, he said, emphasizing that though the two countries speak two separate foreign languages, their culture is almost the same, hence the need to strengthen relationships.

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He recalled that many Guinean soldiers laid their lives while fighting for Sierra Leone during Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 90s and emphasized how grateful Sierra Leone would always be.

“It is very important that we strengthen our relationship security wise. We live in a very challenging world”, he reiterated. He said there were many conflicts in the world today but African conflicts are not given the due attention they deserve. Hence, he said, Africans must take their own security in their hands.

“We can only strengthen our security, peace, and stability when we work together. That is why I am very pleased that the Guinean Armed Forces are here today to work with their Sierra Leonean counterparts on common security matters especially in the Mano River Union”, Kabbah said.

The team visited many state institutions in Sierra Leone including the Office of National Security, Ministry of Defence, Foreign Affairs Ministry and a tour of Kenema and Kailahun’s disputed Yenga village over which Guinea and Sierra Leone are seeking diplomatic avenues for a solution. The students were privileged to learn through presentations and learning materials in each of the institutions visited, Abdul G. Bakayoko, the college’s Head of Department of Languages who was part of the delegation explained Friday.

Guinea and Sierra Leone share strong cultural, language and bilateral ties including military cooperation. The country supported Sierra Leone throughout during Sierra Leone’s civil strife that lasted for nearly eleven years.

Leader of the Guinean delegation Col. Louis Remy Camara – Director of Guinean Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief, noted among other things that his team was largely satisfied with the cooperation they received throughout the visit and expressed his gratitude to President Bio, the government and people of Sierra Leone for according his team the warm hospitality they enjoyed. He affirmed that the Guinean military would always work with the government and people of Sierra Leone to improve security.