Kabbah, Ahmad Tejan

Kabbah, Ahmad Tejan, 1932–2013, Sierra Leonean economist and political leader. A member of the Sierra Leone People's party, he entered the civil service in 1959 and served in the trade and industry and education ministries. After Siaka Stevens and the All Peoples Congress party came to power in 1968, he moved to England and then worked (1970–92) for the United Nations Development Program in several nations. As the civil war raged in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, he was named head of a national advisory council set up to write a new constitution. Kabbah was elected president of Sierra Leone in 1996, ending a decade of military rule, but was deposed in a coup in 1997. Reinstated to office in 1998 by a West African regional force, he won a second term in 2002, the year the civil war officially ended. Credited with restoring peace and unity to the country, he stepped down in 2007.

See his memoir, Coming Back from the Brink in Sierra Leone (2010).

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