Vice President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, Honourable Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh, is in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, for the 37th Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU) Summit which ends on Sunday 18 February 2024.
He was received on Friday at the Bole International Airport by the country’s Minister of Mines and Petroleum, Habtamu Tegegne, for the meeting under the theme: “Educate and Skill Africa for the 21st Century”.
The AU Theme of the Year for 2024 is proposed to be Education, following a global Summit on Transforming Education convened by the UN Secretary-General in September 2022. The urgency stems from the global education crisis and the off-track progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 4.
The first assignment of the West African nation’s technocrat of a Vice President, with a history of successful high-profile negotiations and diplomatic superintending, was to meet officials of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), AU’s foremost self-assessment tool for good governance on the Continent.
The team from the APRM Secretariat, led by Sierra Leone’s Public and Political Affairs Minister, Amara Kallon and the Chief Executive Officer of the APRM Secretariat, Professor Eddie Maloka, briefed Dr Juldeh Jalloh on the report of the African Peer Review Forum, which he will submit to the 37th General Assembly of the African Union Heads of States and Government on 17 and 18 February 2024.
In his response, Dr. Jalloh, a political scientist, first thanked the Secretariat for a great job and for its strong support to Sierra Leone’s tenure as chair of the APR Forum, which is a committee of all participating Member States’ Heads of State and Government and APRM’s highest decision-making authority.
He spoke on pertinent issues that he said were crucial to the continued success of the APRM and the African Union at large, saying that they include but were not limited to good governance, peace and democracy among others.
The Vice President, a political and governance specialist with extensive work experience for the United Nations and other international institutions working on peace and security issues, is also expected to present the report of the Committee of Ten (C-10) of the AU Heads of State and Government on the reform of the United Nations Security Council.
He sits in for President Dr Julius Maada Bio, who is the current coordinator of the C-10, which was set up in 2005 with the core mandate of presenting, advocating and canvassing support for the common African position on reform of the Security Council.
Vice President Dr Juldeh Jalloh is also expected to hold several bilateral meetings on the margins of the Assembly on Saturday and Sunday.
