His Excellency President Dr Julius Maada Bio has joined over 1,200 delegates at the Africa Human Capital Heads of State Summit in the east African nation’s port city, where he is expected to share Sierra Leone’s landmark investment in its citizens through education, healthcare and agriculture.

“I have arrived in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania to attend the Africa Heads of State Human Capital Summit under the theme ‘Accelerating Africa’s Economic Growth: Boosting Youth Productivity by Improving Learning and Skills’,” he tweeted upon arrival.

The two-day summit has brought together leaders from across the continent to focus attention and draw tangible financial and policy commitments prioritizing investing in people as a core driver of productivity, resilience, and growth. It will provide a unique opportunity to deliberate on strategies to accelerate investments in learning, health and skills and to secure the productivity of the region’s people as its greatest asset.

“Human Capital Development has been my Government’s national development priority to unlock the aspirations of our people and the nation’s economic potential in the last five years. We are happy to share our model with the rest of the continent and show how Sierra Leone is gradually becoming Africa’s Human Capital Development success story,” President Bio, who has dedicated his second term in office to investing in agriculture, dealing with food insecurity and employing young people, stated in the tweet.

The New Direction Manifesto 2023 – 2028, Consolidating Gains and Accelerating  Transformation, of the Sierra Leone People’s Party government, prioritises five initiatives as anchors for faster and lasting transformation, key among them is ‘Feed Salone’, which entails an ambitious programme to boost staple food production to drastically minimise reliance on food imports, increase exports, create jobs, boost economic growth and reduce poverty.

The Tanzanian Government had called on the participants to discuss how best the private sector could be motivated to actively collaborate with governments as co-sponsors and co-producers of quality human capital, emphasising that the private sector was a key beneficiary of human capital development efforts.