Sylvie Kandé is committed to several causes pertaining to social justice, restorative historiography and the promotion of literary works.

She values partnership inside and outside academic settings.

Since researching at Fourah Bay College, Freetown for her PhD. dissertation, she has been eager  to contribute to the rehabilitation of the Sierra Leone Public Archives. Together with the West African Heritage Consultants NGO and a group of interested parties, she put together a project with this goal in mind, which received a Prince Claus Whiting Grant in 2022. This grant enabled the rehabilitation of one room in the archives and the training of both archivists and library students in archival digitization. Sylvie Kandé was instrumental in securing the UNESCO “Slave Routes” label for this project and a membership in the International Coalition for the Sites of Conscience for the Sierra Leone Public Archives.

As a member of the Honorary Committee of the World Foundation for the Memorial Gorée-Almadies & the preservation of Gorée Island, she has contributed to preparatory activities towards the launching of the Mémorial Gorée-les Almadies, a Dakar-based projected complex dedicated to the history and memory of the victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the education of the public on those issues, and the reconciliation of memories. She notably presented at the United Nations in the Outreach Program on Slavery & the Transatlantic Slave Trade as well as at the Musée des Civilisations noires in Dakar.

She is the historian-consultant for a series of UNESCO-sponsored children books on the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in partnership with Languages du Sud, a publisher based in Casablanca, Morocco.

She collaborated with the New York Public Library on an oral history project entitled “A People’s History of Harlem.” Attracted by the prospect of being trained to become an interviewer and taking part in an “history from below” initiative, she produced more than 20 interviews to preserve her neighbors’ memories of an African-American neighborhood on the threshold of gentrification. http://oralhistory.nypl.org/neighborhoods/harlem

In 2014 she was a member of the Reading Committee for the Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, a program launced by President Obama as part of his Young African Leaders Initiative.

She has been a supporter and/or mentor to several artists and writers.

From 2017 to 2021, she volunteered to be the head of Caribbean Prize Jury ADELF (Association des Écrivains de Langue Française established by Jeacques Chevrier et Marie-Neige Berthet), responsible for granting prizes to confirmed and emerging writers.

As a Literary Director at Phoenix International Publishing, Collection “Mots & Mémoires” (2010-2014), she  edited and prepared manuscripts for publication, namely Altercultures by As Malick Ndiaye (2011), Josephine Butler-A Collection of Poetry by Susan H. Maurer (2012), Asphalte by Marie Sall (2013).