Sierra Leone’s Minister of Information and Civic Education, Chernor Bah, has virtually participated in the shift the power summit hosted in Bogota, Columbia.
According to sources, Seven years have passed since the Global Summit on Community Philanthropy in Johannesburg where the hashtag #ShiftThePower emerged as a rallying cry for change, and four since the Pathways to Power Symposium in London.
Today, the world is grappling with a series of cascading and intersecting crises and Shift the Power is a mobilizing force that seeks to highlight, harness, resource, legitimise and join up these new ways of “deciding and doing” that are emerging around the world under the larger umbrella of movement generosity so that it can galvanise a vision of a good society and serve as a force for genuine and lasting change.
It is time to further connect bottom-up, people-centred practices, initiatives and organizations, which when considered collectively can form the basis of an alternative system, based on distributed networks and shared power.
In his statement, the minister maintained that, he was glad being part of this year’s summit explain the reasons for his physical absence that it was due to the current development in Sierra Leone as can be drawn to the failed attempted coup on the 26th November 2023.
He maintained that he is still an activist at heart even though he is serving the government.
“I am an activist at heart that is why this issue is important to me, today I serve in government, but I still think I am an activist on loan in government and I am trying to bring my activist passion within the government and in the work that I do” he maintained.
He further explained the background and moves of development of the country in trying to be among other nations in the world.
“We have the power not to be complicit in systems that dehumanise us” he stressed.