CAN TV Board Chair Running For President Of Sierra Leone

"CAN TV's outgoing board chair, Alie Kabba, livened up the December 9th annual meeting of the board with his announcement that he is running for election as President of Sierra Leone."

Um, wow?

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Besides his work with CAN TV, Kabba also served as co-chair of the Golden Door Coalition and board president of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, according to his LinkedIn page. He was also head of the Chicago-based United African Organization.

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In 2012, Kabba was named one of The Grio's top 100 black leaders in America.

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Here's a Tribune Q&A with Kabba from 2001, when he was a caseworker for the state Department of Human Services.

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Kabba has appeared in a handful of news articles over the years, mostly about immigrants. A couple examples . . .

From 2009:

A few months after arriving from Sierra Leone, Alie Kabba learned the dynamics of Chicago immigrant life when he found a pickup soccer game near his Rogers Park apartment. All of the players were Mexicans.

"I didn't have enough for my own team," he recalled. "They had the numbers."

Now head of the United African Organization, Kabba is pursuing an intriguing and complicated experiment: to see whether Africans can forge a political alliance with the Mexicans, who make up the largest share of immigrants in Chicago.

From 2013:

Over the past decade, the 700 block of East 79th Street has undergone a transformation that points to another shift in Chicago's ethnic landscape.

First came Yassa, a Senegalese restaurant whose spicy, rich cuisine has garnered attention from foodies across the region. Then Mandela, an African grocery store, opened next door, followed by two hair braiding shops and a Senegalese tailor across the street.

Now, the colorful business strip lies at the heart of hopes within one of the city's fastest-growing immigrant groups for an "African village" that can stake a claim to a neighborhood in the same way that newcomers have shaped pockets of Chicago for generations.

"We see this as an anchor around which we can see other community development aspects flourishing and, over time, use it to create our resources and, hopefully, our political power, just like in other communities," said Alie Kabba, director of the United African Organization, an umbrella group that has been scouting the 79th Street area for property to use as an African community center.

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Here's his bio from his campaign website.

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From December 19:

"The National Officers of the main opposition SLPP yesterday received one of the leading flagbearer aspirants, Alhaji Dr. Alie Kabba at the party's Headquarters in Freetown."

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Here's Kabba last January:

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