Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr OBE was Mayor of Freetown from May 2018 to February 2023 and has recently been re-elected to serve for a second term. A finance professional with over 25 years of private sector experience in strategic planning, risk management consulting and project management, Mayor Aki-Sawyerr adopted an inclusive, data-driven approach to addressing challenges in the city. She championed the 4-year Transform Freetown plan which detailed 19 concrete targets across 11 sectors and covered issues ranging from tackling environmental degradation to facilitating the creation of jobs for youth. Annually published Transform Freetown reports that document progress made against targets can be found at https://fcc.gov.sl. Aki-Sawyerr’s notable achievements include the construction and operation of Freetown’s first ever wastewater treatment plant, the digitalization and expansion of the city’s property rate system, the creation of over 3,500 jobs for youth and women, the planting and tracking of over 800,000 trees as part of the #FreetownTheTreeTown 1m trees target and securing the ongoing feasibility study for the introduction of a cable car system for the city.

Aki-Sawyerr’s public sector engagement began with her work during the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic and her subsequent role as Delivery Team Lead for the second phase of a multi-stakeholder programme to drive socio-economic recovery in Sierra Leone post Ebola. Mayor Aki-Sawyerr was featured by Time Magazine in the Time100 Next 2021 List and by the BBC in the BBC 100 Women 2020 List. She is a Chartered Accountant with an MSc in Politics of the World Economy from the London School of Economics and a BSc Hons in Economics from Fourah Bay College.  She is married with two children.