Fatima Bio’s speaking engagement at Cambridge University cancelled because of her support for Bondo

Sierra Leone’s First Lady Fatima Jabbe Bio cancelled from speaking event in Cambridge University over FGM views. She’s been under intense and scrutinising news report in the UK stemming from still renting a council flat in London where she lived before becoming First Lady.
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Anti-FGM activists’ anger at first lady’s speaking invite
Tom Ball
The Times
4 June 2026

Women’s rights campaigners have sharply criticised a Cambridge University college over its decision to host the first lady of Sierra Leone at a conference promoting female empowerment despite her having repeatedly failed to oppose female genital mutilation.

Fatima Jabbe-Bio was invited to speak at the Global Power Women Forum, which is due to be held next week at Wolfson College. She has refused to publicly condemn female genital mutilation (FGM) and argued that she does not believe the practice is harmful.

Jabbe-Bio, 45, had lived in London for more than a decade where she met her husband Julius Madda Bio in 2012 and still rents a council flat in Southwark. Her children are British citizens.

When asked to comment on her participation at the event, Jabbe-Bio told The Times: “I would have loved to answer you but honestly I am not going to waste my precious time. If you are looking for a slave I am not one of them.”

The conference is being organised by the Centre for Economic and Leadership Development (CELD), a UKbased “gender empowerment and development-based organisation”. A spokesman for Wolfson College said the event “is not being run in collaboration or partnership” with it.

A letter to CELD and the college from a dozen survivors and anti-FGM activists said Jabbe-Bio’s invitation “sends a deeply troubling message” that “risks undermining the efforts of frontline activists and survivors who are fighting every day to ensure that the next generation of girls can grow up free from violence and coercion”.

Ibifuro Ken-Giami, executive director of CELD, said the organisation opposed FGM, adding Jabbe-Bio would now no longer be speaking at the event.