Blyden is a Sierra Leonean journalist, political commentator, newspaper publisher, and former Sierra Leone minister of Social Welfare, Gender and Children Affairs under erstwhile President Ernest Bai-Koroma from 2016 to 2017. She served as Special Executive Assistant to Sierra Leone’s former president Ernest Bai Koroma from 2013 to 2015.
Blyden is the founder, CEO, and publisher of Sierra Leonean newspaper Awarness Times. She is the only female news publisher in Sierra Leone, and one of the most recognisable names in the country. She has spoken of her interest to eventually run for the presidency of Sierra Leone.
Born and raised in the capital Freetown into a prominent political family, Blyden is widely considered one of the most powerful and highly influential female political figures in Sierra Leone.
A Christian and a member of the Creole ethnic group, she is the great-great-granddaughter of Edward Wilmot Blyden, the “father of Pan-Africanism“. Her maternal grandfather is a Sierra Leonean politician Solomon A. J. Pratt, and her paternal grandfather is the late Sierra Leonean diplomat Edward Wilmot Blyden III.
In 1993 Dr. Blyden graduate with the best B.Sc. results from Medical School and again in 1996, graduated with proficiency with an M.D in Medicine. She is Sierra Leone’s first woman to be elected as University students’ leader in 1994.
A Child-Appointed International Goodwill Ambassador for Sierra Leone’s Children, Sylvia Blyden has been a Youths and Women’s Rights Activist. She represented Sierra Leone’s Female Youths in Beijing during the 1995 United Nations Women’s Confab, and was chosen by her African peers to deliver the Female Youths of Africa Speech on 11 August 1995.
In early 2002, she became Sierra Leone’s youngest National Political Party Leader at the age of 30, and the third Sierra Leone woman to lead a fully registered political party (the first being Presidential Candidate, the late Mrs. Jeridine Williams-Sarho in 1996).
In 2005, she launched Awareness Times, which is generally considered critical of the excesses of Government and State Institutions including that of President Ernest Bai Koroma.
Blyden remains the youngest ever Sierra Leonean to be nationally honoured with an Officer of the Rokel insignia in recognition of her meritorious service to the Nation, on 27 April 2007 Independence Day.