By Kemo Cham
The incoming Executive Director of the campaign group ActionAid Sierra Leone has said he will focus on building institutional capacity as his top priority.
Foday Bassie Swaray, who is expected to assume the mantle of leadership at one of the leading Non-Governmental Organizations in the country this December, said his top most priority will be improving on the capacity of its staff, with particular emphasis on women.
Mr Swaray was speaking to Politico in his first media engagement since his appointment earlier this month, following a search for a successor for Mohamed Silla, who steps down at the end of his two terms, in line with the policy of the institution.
“As Executive Director, my priority will be building our own people power and strengthening the institution,” Swaray said.
Action Aid is an international NGO whose primary aim is to end poverty and injustice the world over. It operates as a federation, comprising 45 country offices which work with communities, often via local partner organisations.
ActionAId’s activities cover a wide range of development issues, with the overall goal of achieving social justice, gender equality and poverty eradication.
In Sierra Leone, at the top of its priorities are women’s rights, the rights to food, education, security and the right to just and democratic governance.
Swaray said as a campaigner for justice and democratic values, ActionAid must be seen to be living these values, hence the need to focus on capacity building for its staff, particularly women who he said are crucial for the organization to meet the needs of its most predominant beneficiary group – women. He noted that there was a big gender gap in the institution, especially at the junior level, which he intends to close.
“Promoting feminist leadership is a key goal in the new ActionAid Global strategy,” he said.
“We cannot achieve social justice and end poverty without addressing issues affecting women,” he added, stressing that capacitating women in the institution will enable them participate at equal level with their men counterparts, which is also in tune with the institution’s current country strategy paper.
ActionAid’s strategy, titled: ‘Enhancing People’s Action for Social Justice,’ is a five-year (2018 to 2023) document that is in its second year of implementation. Swaray said for it to be well implemented, they will need the staff with the right capacity.
Currently the Head of Porgrammes and Policy, Swaray has had an impressive record at ActionAid Sierra Leone, which he joined in 2006 as a project officer in the southern Bo district. He has risen through the ranks serving at various levels, including as programme officer in the field and, for the last seven years, as Head of Programmes.
Swaray said the last 12 years working at the organization was a learning moment for him, having worked across all these departments and undertook many more responsibilities, including fund raising, M&E, programme and policy advocacy.
He hopes that this experience has prepared him for the “huge” task of filling the shoes of his outgoing boss.
ActionAid International, founded in 1972 and headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, has played a major role in global campaign for social, economic and environmental justice. It has attained this feat through building alliances with like-minded institutions. This has been its approach in Sierra Leone, where the organization has impacted many lives.
Mohamed Silla has been at the heart of much of this in the last nine years at the head of the organization. Among his major achievement, he recalled, is introducing a radical reform that saw the organization spending less on itself in terms of running it and more on the people it is meant to serve.
This way, between 2010 and 2012, ActionAid cut down its offices across the country from eight to three.
“That gave us an opportunity to spend more on the people than on our staff,” Silla told Politico.
Also under his watch, ActionAid attained its Affiliate membership of the ActionAId Federation. This meant that between 2011 and 2012 the Sierra Leone office attained full autonomy, managed by an exclusively Sierra Leonean board.
The campaign group also notably funded an ambitious project in the run-up to the 2018 general election geared towards enlightening the citizens into voting based on issues, rather than on the basis of the decades long ethno-regional divide.
As he edges to retirement, Silla is in no doubt that he is leaving the organization he has headed in the last nine years in the most capable hands possible currently.
He said with his experience, Swaray is in a better position to do more than he (Silla) did.
“I have confidence that he can deliver more than I did,” he said, adding: “The biggest trust I have in him is that he is highly committed.
© 2019 Politico Online
