Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr: How tough is it being Freetown’s opposition mayor?

“You just learn that the people who are against you… will always exist and they’ll always use every opportunity they can to amplify mistakes and actually very often try to portray them as deliberate. That’s part of the learning I’ve had to go through.” Being the mayor of Freetown is a tough job. Yvonne Aki Sawyer grew up in Sierra Leone but then went to the UK to study as a student. She stayed, built up a well-paid career in finance, got married, had kids. But after Ebola hit Sierra Leone in 2014 she took a sabbatical to help and became the director of Planning for Sierra Leone's National Ebola Response Centre. In the years since, she’s been voted in as mayor of Freetown twice – running on a ticket dominated with environmental concerns. But she’s also been investigated for corruption and accused of misappropriating public funds - allegations she denies and says are politically motivated. In a frank conversation, she tells Alan Kasujja about her attempts to work with the government, how women support women in Sierra Leone, and denies she’s drunk the political Kool-Aid. “My life is very different to what it was (in the UK)… I certainly don’t earn a fraction of what I used to earn… I am here because this is my heart,” she tells Alan. You can see the Africa Eye film about her work – and the pretty brutal election campaign she went through - “Mayor on the Frontline: democracy in crisis’’ on the BBC News Africa Youtube page.