Week of celebrations to mark historic links with African twin

One of the highlights comes tonight when Bowenson Phillips, chief administrator of Freetown City Council, will be the special guest at a celebration evening at the Guildhall, which will feature presentations and displays about the many projects under way in Freetown as a result of its twinning with Hull.

The link, formed in 1980, is the longest of its kind involving a British city and a country outside Europe.

Projects include links between schools, water purification work being carried out by Christian Aid, and a waste management strategy being developed with Hull Council.

During his visit to Hull, Mr Phillips will visit Holy Trinity Church, schools, a household waste recycling plant, the council’s fleet depot in Stockholm Road - and hopes to squeeze in a Hull City game at the KC Stadium.

The activities, which run until Tuesday, October 25, have been organised by Hull’s Freetown Society, which was set up to forge lasting bonds and develop relationships between the two communities.

A range of ongoing cultural, civic, artistic, and educational links between the two cities have followed, including a series of special events held in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade, which followed a campaign led by Hull MP William Wilberforce.

Society chairman, the Rev Allen Bagshawe, who has visited Freetown four times, said: “It is a pleasure to welcome Bowenson Phillips to our city to mark the 31st anniversary of our twinning arrangement and the first Freetown Week.

“In 1980, Hull showed its pioneering spirit again by choosing to twin with a city in a developing country and thereby reinforcing the bond with Freetown, which was originally forged following the abolition of the slave trade led by William Wilberforce.”

The ties were reaffirmed in April when Mr Bagshawe travelled to Sierra Leone to present a scroll to the Mayor of Freetown, His Worship Herbert George-Williams, during celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence from the UK.

A convoy carrying aid and equipment to build a new waste management system in Freetown left Hull last month and work to install this badly needed infrastructure is now under way.

The project, backed by Hull and East Riding Councils, involves donations of goods and services worth nearly £80,000 from East Yorkshire businesses, including protective suits for workers in Freetown who currently work naked when clearing slurry pits.

The convoy of equipment includes wheelie bins, sludge pipes, pumps, trade containers and refuse vehicles as well as computer equipment, tyres and tool kits.

The initiative followed exchange visits between waste management officers from both cities which identified the need for “essential” infrastructure work as a result of Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war in the 1990s.

And in a separate scheme, a delegation of teachers from Hull schools is currently in Freetown developing partnerships and looking at ways of sharing joint curriculum activities.

The Lord Mayor of Hull, Coun Colin Inglis, who will host the event at the Guildhall and who has chosen the Freetown Society as one of the three charities to benefit from his mayoral year, praised the many organisations supporting the waste management the project.

He said: “Twinning with Freetown opened up many areas of partnership and the waste management strategy being the latest and one of the most vital initiatives. I am very grateful to the generosity of local businesses and organisations for the equipment and resources given to help this project.”