For Plato, the philosopher king is a hypothetical ruler in whom political skill is combined with philosophical knowledge. But though President Julius Maada Bio is not a king, he has been using his political skills which he has acquired since his NPRC days and combining them with philosophical knowledge to address audiences at world-renowned universities and institutions known for high academic standards and citadels for democracy.

President Bio’s recent outing at the United Kingdom’s House of Lords, where he lectured on “leadership in troubled times” and shared his New Direction’s strategies for resilience, is one of the many occasions in which he has shown political skills and philosophical knowledge. He has been showing his compatriots that he was not a PhD candidate for nothing.

At the UK House of Lords, the Sierra Leonean president shared his leadership policy which has been keeping his country reasonably steady during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the current universal economic crisis. He told his audience, “As a human race, our ultimate strength has been tested in the past few years. Through it all, we have shown resilience, grit, ingenuity and determination to evolve stronger from the troubled times we’re passing through.”

Like a philosopher, President Bio told the august body, “How rewarding will it be if prosperity, equity, and relationships in one part of the world lead to prosperity elsewhere?”, noting that if the events of the past few years had taught the world anything, it was that people were far more important than any possessions or politics and that people’s collective success depended on each other. This is philosophical in the sense that President Bio is looking at politics not from a nationalistic perspective but in a globalized form hitting on the fact the world is a global village.

But it was during his visit to Harvard and MIT, the two leading global institutions of higher learning, research, and innovation in Boston in the United States of America, that our “Tok en Do” president was able to expand on the philosophy of his New Direction. He explained how his New Direction for Sierra Leone was enhancing government performance and service delivery in every sector of governance.

At the Forum on Sierra Leone hosted at the Harvard Law School, President Bio effectively participated in an open public forum with lectures by distinguished faculty from Harvard and Tufts University. He was also hosted by MIT Media Lab and Chairman Emeritus Nicholas Negroponte and MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito.

During that memorable visit also, President Bio spoke at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School (“Harvard’s premier arena for political speech”). Before he participated in the Forum on Sierra Leone, our “Tok en Do” president met with Harvard President Larry Bacow and several Deans across the University.

With close to five years in office, President Bio has already laid the foundation for a highly enlightened nation through his human capital development, and also put in motion the mechanisms that will transform Sierra Leone into a major hub for technology and innovation. With his anti-corruption crusade and his government full of technocrats, Sierra Leone’s future is bright.

It is noteworthy to conclude this piece with what the MIT Vice President for Open Learning Sanjay Sarma had to say about our “Tok en Do” president. He had told the audience about President Bio’s “very ambitious and inspiring national development plan” for the next five years, “which focuses on ‘human capital development, [including] health and education, a diversified and resilient green economy, strengthening an inclusive, just, peaceful state, and a competitive economy with a well-developed infrastructure.” These are the qualities of a true philosopher president.