During a visit to Maryland, Her Excellency, Sierra Leone’s First Lady, Dr. Fatima Maada Bio, welcomed Diplomatic Publisher Victor Gotevbe and Vice President Pamela Gotevbe for a conversation that traced her journey from the screen to the global spotlight. Calm and direct, she spoke about growing up in Kono District, navigating life in London, and entering the film industry long before public office called.
She built a name in Nollywood, earning awards and commanding screens, but her deeper drive had little to do with fame. The realities she witnessed-early marriage, abuse, silence around gender issues-pushed her to act. Becoming First Lady gave her access, but not her purpose. That came earlier. Her storytelling background became a tool to engage communities, confront taboos, and change public attitudes.
From launching Hands Off Our Girls to advocating for girls’ education and legal reform, she continues to use her voice to shift mindsets. In person, she speaks the way she leads: without pretense. She doesn’t separate her life from her work. One flows into the other, shaped by film, advocacy, motherhood, and diplomacy. Now, as President of the Organization of African First Ladies for Development (OAFLAD), she expands her reach across the continent, all driven by a belief that no girl should grow up unheard
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You transitioned from award-winning actress and filmmaker to a global advocate for girls and women. How has your storytelling background shaped your leadership style and the way you mobilize people around critical issues?
Thank you very much. Being an actress is something that I have always wanted to do. I have always been somebody who believes you can always tell your own story and tell it positively. So, for me, transforming from being an actress to an advocate is like moving from one platform to another. As an actress, I have a platform, but it is absolutely limited to just the screen, and when I do a movie.
As an advocate, you have a platform that transcends beyond just one in general. I could speak anywhere, and again, I am not just an advocate. As the First Lady, that gives me a bigger platform and that gives me a bigger audience. So, all of the things I wanted to say when I was an actress, I can now say them as a First Lady because my platform is now very, very big.
Sierra Leone recently enacted a landmark ban on child marriage-a major step forward. What systems must now be built or strengthened to ensure real change reaches every girl, especially in rural areas?
The banning of early marriage has been one thing that I live for because, as a victim of early marriage, I understand what it means to suffer such injustice, and I campaigned against that for the last 7 years vehemently-that we have to ban early marriage.
Now that we have, the important thing that I believe the government has to do is make sure that the policies are right and implemented. We can ban early marriage, but if you don’t implement it, there is a problem. So, we are working on all the strategies to make sure that implementations are carried on.
We are building safe homes so that girls know that they can come to a place where they can feel safe when they are being forced to be married. We are working with the Police, the Family Support Unit, the Rainbow Centre (also spelled Rainbo Centre as part of the Rainbo Initiative), and the Aberdeen Women Centre. These are all organizations that deal with gender issues and gender violence issues.
We are working with all of them to make sure that when a girl’s voice is heard, we have to respect them and we have to protect them. And through that, you continue with the advocacy, you continue to enlighten as many girls as possible. As long as society accepts the fact that this is something that has been banned, I believe it will work for the betterment of all girls in Sierra Leone and beyond.
You’ve spent the past few days connecting with Sierra Leoneans across the U.S., including the JMB event. What stood out to you most from those exchanges—and how do you see the diaspora actively shaping Sierra Leone’s future?
As a member of a diaspora community, I lived in the United Kingdom for 20 years before moving back to Sierra Leone. After I got married to my husband, I understand the impact that we have on our family lives-all our relatives that we send over. Basically, I see the diaspora as the fifth economy of every country in Africa.
So, coming here and meeting the Sierra Leone community is always an opportunity to say thank you to them, not only for supporting my husband or for supporting our government, but more importantly, for taking care of the family. Because the money that they send back home is actually helping our economy; it is helping our economy to grow, and we want to continue to say thank you to them.
I know how difficult it is to live in the diaspora. The things you have to do when being part of a diaspora community. I understand that because I was once a part of that community. So, I always doff my hat to them because I know the struggle. And for them to be sending the kind of money that they send back home means that they truly love our country, and they truly want our country to do better.
You’ve received global praise for the “Hands Off Our Girls” campaign. What does impact look like for you beyond awareness-and how do you measure the results of such a deeply personal campaign?
The Hands Off Our Girls campaign is not a campaign that I look forward to people clapping for me all of the time. Every time you touch a life, every time you are able to change a life, every time you are able to make a girl see that they matter. For me, that is an achievement.
I am grateful to God that He has given me the opportunity to serve my country, but more importantly, that He has allowed me to use my voice for positive change that has now become a revolution in our country.
The young girls today know their rights. The young girls today call themselves Fatima’s children, not because they are all my biological children, but because I have given them something that they have wanted all of this time. I have given them their voices back, I have given them the environment to live safely, I have given them the opportunity to understand that there is nothing greater than education.
I have given them the space for them to say no, and that means no when somebody tries to rape them. And when they say no, the person has to respect them. I have also given them a safe space for all of them to feel safe. They don’t have to worry about what they wear, where they go, what time they go there, or worry that somebody is going to rape them.
So, that transition for me is what I would call success. All of the fanfare is appreciated, but touching lives and changing lives, for me, is what matters.
You’ve called out the exploitation of Sierra Leone’s mineral wealth and challenged existing narratives. What practical steps do you believe must happen-politically or economically-to center Sierra Leoneans in the value chain?
I’m not the government. I just happen to be the wife of the President, who is very vocal in things that I believe in. Since Independence, we have had mining companies in our country, but we still don’t have anything to show for those mining companies. They have exploited our lands, they have taken away so many resources from our country, and they give us peanuts in exchange, and I still believe that is wrong.
I am not speaking on behalf of the government; I am speaking as a Sierra Leonean, as an individual who believes things need to change when it comes to the way mining companies treat us. And the worst part of it is that the mining companies believe it’s an entitlement. That as long as they have signed a lease, whatever is in that lease is what they need to focus on.
They don’t see that there is a thing called humanity. You can sign a lease, but also have a human face in that lease that will help the people, promote the agenda of the people, and encourage more people to see themselves as part of that community.
But unfortunately, that is not what we get. They go there, they sign a lease and contract that favors only them, and when you want to speak, they come after you. They come after you because they have the international media. They come after you because they are a multi-billion-dollar entity. They come after you because they feel like they can just shut you up, and you have no say in anything.
Even when they know that what they are doing is absolutely wrong, it’s inhumane, and it’s against any international practice. So, I have a problem with that, and I have said it time and again that if they have to kill me because of my belief, then I believe that is the way God wants me to go.
Your role as First Lady has sometimes attracted strong opinions. How do you navigate public scrutiny while staying focused on your mission—and what has that taught you about women and visibility in leadership?
Africa is a male-dominated continent. To be honest with you, the world today is a male-dominated world. I come from a tribe, the Maninka tribe, where women say nothing. They listen, and the men make all the decisions. For far too long, all the decisions they have been making have not built anything positive to change the narrative for our women and our children.
I feel that if God has brought me here, it is for a reason. You do not hold a position just for the sake of holding a position. When you hold a position, you should be able to use that position in changing lives and touching lives. And if I have to use my voice to change all the ills that are happening within Africa, I am going to do that.
I am not worried about what people are going to say about me. Criticism is part of the job. They are going to say whatever they want to say because they also have a story to tell. They have a story that makes them look good, and if they have to pick on you to make their own story look good, it is what it is.
So, I am not bothered about what people say about me. I am more focused on what the people feel when they see me and what I am able to do to change the narrative for my people. How many lives I am able to change, how many positive impacts I am able to make for my people, for me, that is what matters.
What people say, the criticism they do, doesn’t bother me at all. I take it with a pinch of salt. Before, at the beginning, it was a very, very hard pill. Especially when people make up stories about you that are not true, and they conveniently put those stories out and you have to come out and defend yourself.
And I realized if every time they write something about me and I have to come out and defend myself, I am going to be spending more time defending myself than changing the narrative that I am there for. So, I don’t defend myself anymore. Whatever you believe is your own side of the story. Believe it and please make good use of it.
In less than a decade, you’ve led global conversations, sparked national policy change, and built pan-African coalitions. When the history of this era is written, what would you want your name to stand for?
Wow, that is a very tricky question. In the world today, you have to write your own story because if you don’t write your own story, people will alter the truth, and that is the reason why we still have to use the media, why we still have to put together the information so that people don’t write the wrong thing.
In terms of how I should be remembered, you know what? The million girls I have helped transform their lives. The millions of girls who today can boastfully say, “I have finished my secondary school and I am now at a university.” The millions of girls who are currently pursuing STEM courses, just as we did not in the past, when we didn’t venture into fields like engineering. Now we are talking about pilots, we are talking about innovators, and we are talking about entrepreneurs.
Those girls are my story. Those girls will tell my story because one day they will say, “There was a woman who came, and it was because of that woman that today I am who I am today.” My story is written through those girls. Whatever is done internationally is part of the process because people have to say something. But my story will be written through the lens of all those young girls that I am transforming now.
For young people today, the world has become more challenging. The world today is more difficult than it was when our forefathers were here, even when our grandfathers or our fathers were alive. So, for me, all that I can say to the youth of not just our continent but all over the world is to focus on a purposeful education. It is not all education that matters these days. Because of innovation, because of technology, focus on a purposeful education so that you are also able to contribute to nation-building.
There is nothing that you can do without education. Even if you are the greatest billionaire today, if you are not educated, you are going to be employing educated people to manage your life. If you want to be the captain of your own life, you should be able to navigate it very well. The only way to do that is through purposeful education, one that transcends, one that is meaningful, and one that is applicable.
You do not just do education for education’s sake. It’s not just about reading and writing, and it doesn’t mean that you have to be educated and speak English, because English is not the only language in the world. But you can change the world by knowing that the technology we use does not speak language, but it transforms the world today.
So, all I can say to the young people is be purposeful, be driven, have a dream, and don’t allow anyone to kill that dream for you. Chase what you believe in and make sure that you do what your instincts tell you, because the biggest and greatest advice in the whole world today is your instincts. Instincts don’t lie. Believe in them and dream, dream hard. If anybody tells you to kill your dream, that person is your enemy.
Would you still be doing this if you weren’t the First Lady of Sierra Leone?
So, if I were not the First Lady, I would still be that woman who is very stubborn. That woman who believes that things have to change. From the age of nineteen, I have been doing this. It just happens that now that I am the First Lady, I have a bigger platform. Even before becoming an actress, I have been an activist. Everybody who knows me, I started campaigning for issues that matter to me from the age of nineteen, when my immediate brother passed away, and they said he had meningitis.
When he died, the first thing that came out of most of our family was that it was witchcraft. And my brother died of meningitis. And that is when I knew we had to educate our people. We have to let them know what the world is all about. The primitive thinking has to stop, and the only way to do that is to use my voice.
When I started campaigning for meningitis, I moved out of that and introduced a program called Face of the Gambia. Because at that time, girls in the Gambia could not go to school and finish their education. At the age of twelve, you are preparing yourself for marriage; it is not for university.
So, most girls like me knew at the age of twelve that we were going to be shipped off and be married to whoever our parents had allocated us. Because it’s like an allocation, it’s not asking your permission. You don’t have a voice to do anything or say anything. They tell you, “This is your husband; he is coming on this date.” You have to obey and comply and do what you are told. And I felt that was wrong.
I then started this thing called Face of the Gambia, and through that program I was doing, I started sponsoring girls. I started with fifty-two girls. I started sponsoring their education, making sure they go to school, because one of the reasons why they were not able to go to school is money. It doesn’t matter how much you want to go to school and how often you want to be in school, if you don’t have the money to pay for it, you won’t go there.
So, I introduced that. And then I went further and started the Women of Excellence Award. The Women of Excellence Award is to bring out women from rural areas to have a voice within the cosmopolitan cities. Most of these women are farmers. These are the market women. These are the women in remote areas that are doing all the work, and then we come to the city, and the women in the city take all the glory. And I felt this was wrong.
I introduced the Women of Excellence Award, where I then asked the former President of the Gambia to be the Chief Patron, and the Vice President, who was then a woman, to be our Patron. We were celebrating women. Women who had never seen a classroom before.
So, these are all ways and means of making sure women come out, women are able to come to the table, and women are able to give back to society. So, I started that at the age of nineteen. If I were not the First Lady, I would still be doing that because everything that I have done is through my own story.
It is through my own abuse. It is through my own problems that I faced. And it took me a very long time to be able to have the security that I have with myself today, that I can say to myself, “What you did to me was wrong, and I will not accept it.”
So, from the time I started saying that to myself and saying “No,” and I understood the meaning of “No” and the value of “No”, and that “No” is what I decided now to move to all the young girls around the continent, so that the word “No” matters to them.
