SIERRA LEONE: Communication for Development national consultant

Countries

First name: Fatmata

Last name: SESAY-KEBBAY

Country: Sierra Leone

Responsibilities: National Consultant in Communication for Development in the FSCA Programme in Sierra Leone.

Dr Sesay-Kebbay is an experienced consultant in development studies based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. In her career she worked on economic development issues, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and gender equality. She has contributed to the formulation, coordination and implementation of economic, fiscal and multidisciplinary policies for sustainable development in Sierra Leone and several African countries.

Her background in economics and communication is built on many years of practice that made Dr Sesay-Kebbay an expert as a Development Economist and a Development Planning Specialist at both local and national levels.

Currently, Dr Sesay- Kebbay is a member of the FSCA team in Sierra Leone working on the communication’s means of observation and on their effectiveness. Her work focuses on the participant’s needs, which are collected by questionnaires and personal observations on the communication aspects in the field.

She often meets country level associations and local farmers in order to understand their perception of the project, to find out their problems and to ask their opinion on what should be implemented in the project.

In April 2010 she went on her first FSCA field mission with the ICC assistant in Kono District, Sierra Leone, where she held focus group discussions with farmerbased organizations. In that occasion she involved rice and plantain growers in the planning stage of intervention, addressing different needs in different chiefdoms.

Furthermore, her assignment focuses also on inter-country issues, such as sharing regional markets’ good practices and food quality and safety accomplishments at local and national level. In order to achieve these goals she often visits the FSCA intervention area, taking the opportunity to talk and listen to the project’s beneficiaries.

Communication has a key role in the implementation of activities, also the hardest ones. Dr Sesay- Kebbay has a good approach in explaining new practices and processes to nontechnical audience.

Thanks to these measures, she can see changes in beneficiaries’ crop production quality, product processing and market access and propose strategies on how these can be effectively communicated. As a FSCA team component, Dr Sesay-Kebbay’s challenge is to work with local participant’s involvement and for their particular benefit.