President Ernest Bai Koroma of Republic of Sierra Leone has invited SMEDAN to assist his administration in building institutions and structures that would permanently address the scourge of poverty and unemployment, admitting that the West African country has “serious problem of youth unemployment”.

President Koroma, who was in Abuja to attend the inauguration of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as Nigeria’s President, announced the invitation at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel during a meeting with the Director-General of SMEDAN, Alhaji Muhammad Nadada Umar and the Director-General of the National Directorate of Employment [NDE], Alhaji Abubakar Mohammed. The meeting was held at the instance of the country’s High Commissioner to Nigeria, His Excellency Mr. Henry Macauley.
“We need to set up institutions and structures that will address poverty and unemployment, not with a cosmetic approach, but on a permanent basis”, he said. The Sierra Leone President disclosed that his administration had already established Youth Commission, an Agency considered critical to solving the problem of unemployment. Profiling the country’s population of unemployed youths in Sierra Leone, he disclosed that they were made up of largely the unschooled, school drop-outs and then graduates.