Transformative Role of Youth-Led Movements in Peacebuilding: Innovations and Challenges in Sierra Leone
Daniel Chigudu 
Issue: Vol.6 No.9 Article 14 pp.1944 – 1959
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20256914 | Published online 22nd August, 2025
© 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
In Sierra Leone, youth-led social movements have been essential to post-conflict peacebuilding by tackling the aftereffects of the violence, including social disintegration, political marginalisation, and unemployment. With an emphasis on their contributions to sustainable peace and development, this research explored these movements’ innovations and difficulties. The study investigated how youth-led projects use creative tools like social media, the arts, and entrepreneurship to promote communication and reconciliation through content analysis of qualitative data from reports, government documents, and case studies. The findings showed that these movements play a key role in fostering grassroots involvement in government and mending societal divisions. However, issues such as restricted financial resources, deeply ingrained social mores, and a lack of political participation still exist. The study concludes that maintaining peacebuilding initiatives requires empowering the young through focused policies, mentorship programs, and financial assistance. Sierra Leone’s youth-driven movements underscore the transformative potential of engaging young people in reimagining governance and fostering long-term stability across Africa. To provide young peacebuilders with mentorship, technical assistance, and capacity-building, the study recommends boosting targeted funding for grassroots youth-led peacebuilding initiatives, institutionalising youth participation in national governance and peacebuilding frameworks through advisory councils and inclusion in decision-making bodies, and fortifying partnerships between the government, non-governmental organisations, and international organisations. This study advances scholarship by highlighting the gender dynamics and structural barriers that influence their effects and these movements’ transformative role in promoting political stability, reconciliation, and community development.
Keywords: Youth-led social movements, Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone, Post-conflict innovations, Grassroots governance and reconciliation.
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Prof. Daniel Chigudu is a Research Professor at the University of South Africa, College of Economic Management Sciences, Office of Graduate Studies and Research. Former independent Contractor for the African Union Agenda 2063 under the University of South Africa (2017-2023). An expert for sustainable development who was engaged as part of the team of experts in 2022 by the African Union Commission to review the First-Ten-Year Implementation Plan of the African Union Agenda 2063 based on the competencies and understanding of all the sustainable development goals especially, those concerned with, strong institutions, peace and justice (SDG16) and partnerships for sustainable development (SDG-17), and reducing inequalities (SDG-10), gender equality (SDG-5), and SDG 13 for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts (which is linked intrinsically to all the other 16 Goals of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. The report was presented to African Heads of State and Government in 2023, informing the second ten-year implementation plan (STYIP) of Agenda 2063. A scholar of repute with an interdisciplinary approach and published extensively 60 journal articles on the African context concerning sustainable development in areas such as peace and security, social protection, corporate governance, migration and conflict, electoral democracy, gender equality, politics and constitutionalism, democracy and development, development and governance systems, climate action and public administration and management. He is passionate about Africa’s culture and heritage, future and development. Inspired and believes in collaborative research, its value and the strength of diversity.
Chigudu, Daniel. “Transformative Role of Youth-Led Movements in Peacebuilding: Innovations and Challenges in Sierra Leone,” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 6, no. 9 (2025): 1944 – 1959, https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20256914.
© 2025 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Journals. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
