The Director General of the Gabriel L. Dennis Foreign Service Institute (FSI), Ambassador Reginald B. Goodridge, Sr., has successfully led a delegation of 100 students, faculty, and administrative staff on a four-day academic and cultural excursion to Freetown, Sierra Leone.
The visit was undertaken at the invitation of the Foreign Service Academy (FSA) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Sierra Leone. The Liberian delegation included a cross-section of lecturers and prominent figures, notably Senator Momo Cyrus of Lofa County, who also serves as a faculty member at the FSI. The excursion was designed to strengthen ties between the two institutions and to build bridges of friendship and cooperation between the peoples of Liberia and Sierra Leone.
According to Ambassador Goodridge, the primary purpose of the visit was to enhance cross-fertilization of academic, social, and cultural exchanges between the FSI and the FSA, while fostering stronger bilateral cooperation between the sister republics. “This excursion demonstrates our commitment to cultivating a new generation of diplomats who are globally minded, regionally focused, and deeply connected to the cultural heritage of West Africa,” DG Goodridge remarked.
One of the highlights of the program was a day-long intellectual discourse jointly organized by the FSI and the FSA, which brought together officials of the Sierra Leonean government, faculty members, and students from both institutions. The deliberations were structured around six thematic areas critical to regional and global diplomacy. The topics included:
These discussions provided valuable insights into the complexities of modern diplomacy and underscored the importance of collaboration between institutions in addressing shared challenges within the MRU subregion. The four-day excursion was climaxed with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two diplomatic academies.
The MOU formalizes cooperation in research, student and faculty exchanges, and joint academic activities. Ambassador Reginald B. Goodridge, Sr. signed on behalf of the Gabriel L. Dennis Foreign Service Institute of Liberia, while his counterpart, Ambassador Soulay Daramy, signed for the Foreign Service Academy of Sierra Leone. Both parties hailed the signing of the MOU as a landmark achievement that will promote the institutionalization of academic partnerships and contribute to the strengthening of diplomatic protocols within the Mano River Union.
The FSI expressed profound gratitude to the Government and people of Sierra Leone for the warm reception accorded the Liberian delegation and reaffirmed its commitment to sustaining and expanding academic diplomacy across the subregion.
