FORBES AFRICA was at Expo 2020 Dubai to witness the tech-filled finale of the multi-billion-dollar, 182-day global event that also brought all of Africa.



The party was on for six months.



And on a balmy night, under a gold dome in a grand spectacle of sound and light that saw hundreds of performers and several thousand diverse and starry-eyed visitors, the curtain came down on the Expo 2020 Dubai that brought through its gates an estimated staggering 23 million visitors.



The closing ceremony of the world gala in the UAE emirate last night (March 31), had thousands of visitors streaming in well into the wee hours for the live shows, fireworks and pyrotechnics.



Tech reigned.



Even as Grammy award-winning singer and headline crowd-pleaser Norah Jones said it’s her first trip to Dubai and dazzled in a grey sequinned dress at the piano singing the soulful Come Away With Me, and as thousands thronged every inch of space on the walkways – dodging baby strollers and e-scooters – to hear global pop sensation Christina Aguilera, the true star of the show was the Al Wasl gold dome, the all-rounder of the mega event.



The intricate lattice dome’s eye-popping technical specs? At 67.5 meters tall and comprising 13.6 kilometers of steel, it weighs 2,544 tonnes – “as much as 25 blue whales”. And under it, a sea of humanity gazing at an immersive 360-degree projection system with giant fabric screens.



At the closing event, the baton was handed over to the Japanese city of Osaka, where the next expo will be held in 2025.



The UAE, which celebrated its 50th year during the expo and changed its weekend to Saturday and Sunday in keeping with the West, is home to multiple nationalities. The expo, delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, is being seen as “the start of a new beginning”.



Africa was well-represented too. The colorful African stalls in the world souq areas were quite the magnet for crowds, with hand-woven African baskets and print sandals selling at Dhs100 ($27) a piece.



The African Union pavilion located within the Opportunity District at the expo site spoke to the Agenda 2063 aspirations of the continent and strengthening trade links between the Middle East and Africa.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“It’s been a great experience,” says Coumba Dioukhane, a spokesperson at the Côte d&#8217;Ivoire pavilion, even as crowds queue up around us to get their expo passports stamped by the West African country.



“We were able to showcase the Ivory Coast from an economic, social and cultural point of view; this was an opportunity to show to the whole world where we are, and the investment opportunities we have.”



Similar sentiments at the Sierra Leone pavilion.



The salesman at the store inside points to the python skin for sale and a crocodile skin handbag selling for Dhs1,500 ($408). “But you know we also have gold and diamonds,” he says with a glint in his eye. “Our country was hidden but not anymore. The last six months here in Dubai have been incredible.”



South African President Cyril Ramaphosa had also been at Expo 2020 Dubai, at his country’s pavilion three days before the finale, calling it “a seminal event… as we strive to recover and rebuild in the wake of the pandemic”.



Some enduring connections for Africa in this glistening city in the desert.

Closing Ceremony Held For Expo 2020 Dubai

World Fair Ends With Festivities, Pyrotechnics And High Tech

TOPLINE At least 92 people died and more than 100 were injured after an oil tanker exploded following a collision with a bus in the suburbs of Sierra Leone&#8217;s capital, Freetown, on Friday evening, according to authorities.



<h2 id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



A mortuary at a hospital in Freetown said it saw 92 bodies by Saturday morning, while the chances of survival were slim for around 30 people being treated with severe burns, according to the<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-africa-explosions-sierra-leone-julius-maada-bio-face14a7564fa650a8ae0a73ce2ece3f?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_medium=AP&amp;utm_source=Twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;Associated Press</a>.



Victims included people who gathered to<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/fuel-tanker-blast-sierra-leone-capital-kills-least-91-says-morgue-2021-11-06/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;collect</a>&nbsp;oil leaking from the tanker, according to Reuters.



The explosion happened at an intersection outside a busy supermarket in Wellington, a crowded suburb east of Freetown, the<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59188753" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;BBC</a>&nbsp;reported.



Photos taken after the explosion showed piles of burnt cars and motorcycles.



Freetown Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr<a href="https://www.facebook.com/yakisawyerr/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> said</a> the extent of property damage in Freetown was unclear.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">My heart ❤️ goes out to all who have been killed by this tragedy&#8230; I send my condolences to family and friends and my deepest sympathy to the community. I ask Sierra Leone 🇸🇱 government to support all who have been affected by this very sad &amp; dangerous incident.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SaloneTwitter?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SaloneTwitter</a> <a href="https://t.co/bMLNpyYAnA">pic.twitter.com/bMLNpyYAnA</a>&mdash; Catherine For Madina (@CathyForMadina) <a href="https://twitter.com/CathyForMadina/status/1456904991801741314?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 6, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<h2 id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio<a href="https://twitter.com/PresidentBio/status/1456904073941299201" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;said</a>&nbsp;that he is “deeply disturbed” by the tragedy. He added that his government “will do everything” to support families who have been affected.



<h2 id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



In March, a fire that broke out in one of the city’s slums left more than 80 injured and 5,000 people displaced, the<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59188753" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;BBC</a>&nbsp;reported.



<h2 id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/fuel-tanker-blast-sierra-leone-capital-kills-least-91-says-morgue-2021-11-06/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ninety-nine killed in fuel tanker blast in Sierra Leone capital</a>&nbsp;(Reuters)



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/world/africa/tanker-truck-explodes-sierra-leone.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tanker Truck Explodes in Sierra Leone, Killing at Least 98</a>&nbsp;(New York Times)



<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59188753" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sierra Leone explosion: Scores dead after Freetown oil tanker collision</a> (BBC)



By Lisa Kim, Forbes Staff

A woman approaches a community-manned checkpoint in Mafaray

At Least 92 People Killed In Oil Tanker Explosion In Sierra Leone

Blockchain is being adapted for election usage elsewhere in the world, and could provide the answer to making voting more transparent in Africa.
Kenyan elections are notoriously tricky affairs, usually with disputed results and occasionally with accompanying violence.Other African elections often descend into chaos, as most recently seen in Zimbabwe, but in blockchain, the open, distributed ledger most commonly associated with bitcoin, a solution may have been found.
Earlier this year, presidential elections took place in Sierra Leone. During the vote, Swiss foundation Agora used blockchain to record votes in more than 300 polling centers. As blockchain records transactions in a verifiable and permanent way, it is almost impossible to alter. Therefore, by recording votes on it, elections in theory become more transparent.
This greater transparency could be pivotal to ensuring more effective democracy and calmer elections across Africa, where disputes over votes are common. Kenya looks set to become the next country to test the benefits, with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman Wafula Chebukati saying it would utilize blockchain in the next elections.
<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/entrepreneurs/2018/09/03/building-blockchain-tech-with-the-world-as-their-official-address/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Building Blockchain Tech With The World As Their Official Address</a>
What impact could it have? Michael Kimani is Chairman of the Blockchain Association of Kenya, and he says that will depend on how it is used.
“From my experience, any deployment of distributed ledger technology could be at one of three points in the electoral system – the main server where voter registration data is held, the national tallying center where all information from across the country is collated, and the tallying centers where group representatives take part in a tallying process,” he says.
Wherever and however the IEBC chooses to employ blockchain, electoral laws would have to be changed to accommodate it. Kimani also says it’s worth keeping in mind that the technology itself is still nascent.
“Beyond cryptocurrency, there hasn’t been any deployment at scale,” he says. 
Nevertheless, Kimani believes the IEBC statement is a positive starting point, and that using blockchain could have a significant impact on reducing fraud.
<blockquote>“The concept of a distributed ledger for processes that were previously limited to a single entity would provide significant improvements for the whole process,” he says.</blockquote>
“The concept of a distributed ledger for processes that were previously limited to a single entity would provide significant improvements for the whole process,” he says.
“I am less concerned about the technology itself. It really boils down to man-made specifications that can be implemented. I see potential problems in setting up the necessary governance structures required to make it a reality. There are some things the technology can do, but the rest of it is really up to humans – the laws we set up, the institutions we set up, the audit processes we set up to check on the technology where it fails, and the dispute resolution structures we set up.”
Challenges remain. Yet, blockchain is being adapted for election usage elsewhere in the world. It has been piloted in elections by the state of West Virginia in the United States, while tech firm Kaspersky Lab has built a platform that utilizes it for voting.
Alexey Malanov, a malware expert at Kaspersky Lab, says it is the next logical step on from online voting, which has been used in countries such as Estonia in northern Europe.
“Online voting can be highly beneficial for modern society – it has the potential to make voting easier, cheaper and more convenient. In the modern, efficiency-driven, mobile world, various limitations of offline voting have become apparent: it’s expensive, time-consuming and often inaccessible – or at least challenging for people who aren’t physically present to cast a vote,” he says.
<div id="attachment_37733" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37733" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-37733" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alexey-Malanov-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alexey-Malanov-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alexey-Malanov-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alexey-Malanov-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alexey-Malanov-768x1151.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alexey-Malanov-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Alexey-Malanov.jpg 1366w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Alexey Malanov</div>
“Online voting can help overcome these challenges, but this brings several uncertainties of its own: how to properly secure the process and how to make sure that the votes aren’t changed or altered by an external or internal party.”
Usage of blockchain technology for general elections, however, is not reasonable at the moment, he says.
“It’s quite a slow technology. A public blockchain processes 10 transactions per second, [which] is not enough to ensure voting for millions of citizens within one day,” Malanov says.
However, Kaspersky Lab is sure blockchain has vast potential yet to be uncovered, with its Business Incubator team exploring opportunities for secure implementation of blockchain for commercial use, and how its transparent, incorruptible and trusted characters could benefit areas beyond cryptocurrencies.
“We saw a great market opportunity and decided to support an experimental and promising project called Polys. It’s a secure online voting system based on blockchain technology and backed by transparent crypto-algorithms,” Malanov says.
“From the user’s perspective, it consists of a web service through which to organize voting and cast a vote, using a mobile phone or tablet. As in any vote, there are several key requirements that would make online voting trusted and secure – transparency of the process, anonymity of a voter and their confidence that their vote won’t be altered in favor of a candidate or option they didn’t choose.”
Blockchain-based programs like Polys provide all this, and it’s surely only a matter of time before we start seeing them used in African elections
&#8211; Tom Jackson

Blockchain At The Polls?

Not too long ago, West Africa – from regional behemoth Nigeria to smaller states like Liberia and Sierra Leone – was bedeviled by coups and civil wars. Now, there is not a major civil war in the region and it has been a very long time since there was a coup.
A sign of the times was the recent, and peaceful, elections in once war-torn Liberia. There have, however, been agitations in Togo and Guinea, with leaders and families staying in power too long. It used to be the case that longtime leaders provided an air of stability. Entrenched over time, the price of this seeming peace has been the commonwealth, with their countries’ resources concentrated in the hands of ruling family members and their cronies.
Things are beginning to change though. In January last year, Gambians kicked longtime leader, Yahya Jammeh, out of power. A peaceful resolution to what could have been a major crisis was aided by the deft handling of leaders in the region under the aegis of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Now, West African leaders know that if they want to rule, the only route is via the ballot box. The situation in Côte d’Ivoire, where a heated succession battle is ongoing, needs to be closely monitored, but peace is unlikely to be disturbed.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/investment-guide/2017/10/30/west-africa-less-attractive-investors/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Why Is West Africa Less Attractive To Investors?</a>
Months ago, Togolese, perhaps taking a cue from Gambians, took to the streets to stop an attempt by their second generation president from the Gnassingbé family to extend his rule. In 2005, Faure Gnassingbé succeeded his father, Eyadéma Gnassingbé, who had been in power since 1967 until his death. The protests were effective. In September, the Togolese parliament adopted proposals that would limit the number of terms any individual can serve as president to two five-year terms; albeit a boycott by opposition MPs meant a referendum would be needed to change the constitution, since the parliamentary vote fell short of the four-fifths majority needed.
The opposition’s gripe is that President Gnassingbé would still be able to contest and stay in power for an additional 10 years, after already serving three terms. Should that be the case, his family would have ruled Togo for at least 60 years.
Further west, Guineans also took to the streets over fears that President Alpha Condé might change the constitution to allow him to contest for a third term in 2020, after already serving consecutive five-year terms. They were also venting over economic difficulties amid vast mineral wealth – a third of the world’s aluminium ore bauxite reserves are in Guinea.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/investment-guide/2017/07/20/tough-times-cocoa-bean-counters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Tough Times For Cocoa Bean Counters</a>
Ordinarily, these are populations that tend to be reserved; in part due to their culture, but also because of a history of crackdowns by security agencies. That they are now finding their voice is a positive. It speaks to a desire for a better life, rule of law and a greater say in how their countries are run. There is clearly a democratic wave moving across the region.
Incidentally, Togo was recently feted by the Americans, who held the 16th forum of their African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade policy in Lome. Togo was granted a so-called textile passport that would allow it enjoy preferential treatment under AGOA for the export of textile and apparel products to the United States.
Foreign investors would do well to pay heed to the smaller West African countries. Their relative stability and eager governments could prove to be profitable for investors looking to set up bases in low cost environments with the ability to serve the entire region. &#8211; Written by Rafiq Raji

First Peace, Then Progress

Sixteen-year-old Yaema lives in Kenema, a major city in Sierra Leone, with her aunt who raised her after both her parents passed away when she was still a little child. Around six months ago, one of her uncles sexually assaulted her when he came home drunk. Her aunt dismissed the incident when Yaema told her about it the following day.
“I was warned by my aunty to think carefully about my future before making such an evil accusation,” says Yaema.
Along with the emotional trauma she had to endure after the rape, Yaema now also has a physical reminder of it; she is pregnant. Her aunt will not accept that her brother is guilty. She accuses Yaema of sneaking away from school to play “husband and wife” with her boyfriend.
There is no respite at school either. Yaema goes through a rigorous routine of strapping a bandage across her stomach and wearing oversized cardigans to hide her pregnancy. The strapping, with the help of her friend Hassanatou, takes about an hour each morning. Although the strapping could be detrimental to the health of Yaema and her baby, it is something she is willing to do so she can realize her dream of finishing school and becoming a lawyer one day.
“If my teachers find out I am pregnant I will not be allowed to sit my BECE exams this year because of the ban,” says Yaema.
In April last year, the Sierra Leone government banned pregnant girls from attending school and sitting exams. The Basic Education Certificate of Examination (BECE) qualification is needed to attend senior secondary school.
Hassanatou and Yaema have been best friends since they met in primary six. This year they hope to pass their BECE exams and attend the Modern High School in the country’s capital Freetown.
“It is so unfair that Yaema might not get to graduate this year because of something she had no control over,” rues Hassanatou.
The ban sparked outrage from human rights organizations around the world.
“This is very disturbing for Amnesty International because this stigmatizes over 10,000 girls, destroying their future life chances,” says Sabrina Mahtani, West African Researcher for Amnesty International.
The ban comes at a time when children in Sierra Leone have already missed nine months of school due to the Ebola outbreak.
“This is a practice that predates Ebola and it was more of an informal practice in some schools, but now this informal private practice has been turned into a formal government policy,” says Mahtani.
According to Amnesty International, the Ebola crisis led to young girls becoming victims of sexual attacks and forced marriages. The National Strategy for the Reduction of Teenage Pregnancy, introduced by the government of Sierra Leone in 2013 and cited in the Amnesty International report, states that 28% of girls between the age of 15 and 19 are either mothers or pregnant.
“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up after the war in 2004, said that the exclusion of pregnant girls from education is discriminatory and archaic and we think the ban of the pregnant girls is a missed opportunity to correct the previous wrong,” says Mahtani.
There are some who vehemently support the ban though. A teacher, who wishes to remain anonymous, says the classroom is no place for a pregnant girl.
“These young girls are at a vulnerable time in their lives and, unfortunately, they learn from each other. If we encourage pregnant girls to come to school, others will think it is normal and will follow suit,” he says.
Those against the ban argue that it fails to take into account the high levels of sexual violence in Sierra Leone. Yaema attests she is not the only victim of rape.
“Two years ago, one of my good friends was sexually attacked by a group of men on her way home and unfortunately she did not survive the incident,” she says.
The fear of stigmatization prevents young girls from speaking out. In a statement to Amnesty International, Moijueh Kaikai, the Minister of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, says there has to be consequences for the girls that refused to adhere to the “do not touch” instructions issued during the Ebola outbreak.
Yaema, along with many other victims of sexual violence in Sierra Leone, is caught in the crossfire. Needless to say, their plight is agonizing.
“The blame is really being put on girls rather than the government. There is a limited amount of sex education in schools, which is not consistent or comprehensive across all of Sierra Leone and banning pregnant girls from schools does nothing to tackle the underlying causes of teenage pregnancy,” says Mahtani.
Even girls that aren’t pregnant are being humiliated. There are no official provisions for testing whether girls are pregnant. Teachers touch the girls’ stomachs and breasts inappropriately, while some are forced to take urine tests.
“The question that needs to be asked is what is the government doing about those who subject these poor girls to rape and other forms of sexual violence? What punishment is being given to them? Education should be a right for every single one of these girls and not a privilege that can be removed at any time,” says Gloria Ngozi, a human rights expert who works on children’s rights.
Only six in 10 girls between the ages of 15 and 24 in Sierra Leone are literate, according to a government health survey in 2013. With this ban, these figures will only get worse.

shutterstock_156423956

Pregnant, Blamed , Banned

Sierra Leone is slowly getting over its long and brutal civil war. That’s what the World Bank statistics tell you anyway. In 2003, Sierra Leoneans, on average, could expect to live for a miserably short 42 years.  It’s now 48 years and rising. Gross National Income, or GNI, is also rising, up from $220  per year to $340. But, two-thirds of the population of six million still live below the poverty line.
In 2013, Sierra Leone finds itself in economic transition, no longer entirely dependent on external aid but still without a vibrant local economy. Although the war officially ended in 2002, it left a legacy of grinding poverty. Thousands of young people are homeless, mainly because of the poverty that high unemployment brings. Eleven years after the war ended, you still find orphans or war-damaged people who are unable to pick up their previous lives.
Hazel Chandler first visited Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia in 2005 to make a film about the Liberian child rights activist Kimmie Weeks. Chandler is an experienced filmmaker, with an interest in making documentary films about challenging topics.
“I still find there are pockets of young men, alienated and angry, ready to go back to war. As soldiers they had money, a purpose, camaraderie and power. On the streets or in the provinces they have nothing.”
Chandler began filming with a dangerous street gang in Kenema, a large regional city North-East of the capital Freetown. When she gave the gang leader, Yumyum or Bad Man, as he is known, a hand-held camera to document his own life on the streets, an extraordinary thing happened.
“I fully expected him to film for a couple of days and then sell the camera. Yet, even when Yumyum went to prison and endured the most difficult of circumstances, he chose not to sell it for bail money. The camera became an expression of his identity and self-worth. He held on to it at all costs.”
The filmmaker quickly realized she was on to something.
“‘Yumyum’, my film, focused on the lives of three young men. Yumyum had briefly been a combatant. A-Class had lost his parents in the war, and KKDog had run away from an abusive uncle. Teaching these young guys to film and edit their own films, to document their own lives, gave them a purpose and a self-worth, which had been missing.”
After two years of filming the soon-to-be released documentary, she did what filmmakers are never supposed to do. She kept filming but stepped into the story and started to help her characters find schooling, jobs and a place to live.
From there, Chandler began to train homeless and poor people of all ages to film and edit, initially working in the offices of other charities.
“I found Sierra Leoneans living on the streets to be a talented and determined bunch, with a hunger for knowledge. They are pulling themselves up with grit and modesty and are a delight to teach. They have been the making of me, not the other way round,” the filmmaker explains.
Four years ago, alongside her son, Michael, she took the plunge to set up WAYout Arts, a charity dedicated to working with the street youth of Sierra Leone. In 2012, the WAYout Arts Hub finally opened in the center of Freetown. A music studio formed part of the Hub.
However, in tough economic times, charities worldwide were not being funded and were closing down projects.
“I think it was a happy coincidence of timing. I wrote to Strummerville, the Joe Strummer Music Foundation, when they were looking to donate outside the UK. They gave us the funds, equipment and the services to set up a music studio and taught our guys to be sound engineers,” she says.
Today, WAYout are recording street artists such as the Black Street Family. Previously, the 200-strong group was known as the Black Street Gang— among the most feared criminals in Freetown. Now, they have released an album, utilizing one of the few professional recording studios in the country.
As Chandler explains: “We won two out of the five film and music awards at Sierra Leone’s recent Human Rights Festival, and our reputation is growing. Our recorded music is regularly played on the radio and we have trained 600 young people, some of whom now work in the mainstream media. I am privileged to be a small part of that.”
In a final twist worthy of Nigeria’s Nollywood, the former gang leader Yumyum, who inspired both a documentary and then the WAYout Arts project has become Chandler’s adopted son. Yumyum is now known by his real name Amara and is regarded as family by both Hazel and Michael.
“Amara was the inspiration for everything, and he has changed my life. In Sierra Leone I am known as Mama Hazel; I fought the age and motherhood thing at first, but now I have accepted the role and I have a real sense of belonging.
“WAYout is helping people’s lives change, not least of all my own. When I’m in Sierra Leone I like who I am, which is a really nice feeling and which isn’t always true when I’m back in Britain.”   FL

hazel-yumyum-eugene-on-bikes

THe brit in sierra leone  turning gangs into film crews

For a better part of the 1990s and the early 2000s, the mere mention of the name Sierra Leone conjured up images of amputees, brutal execution, abandoned children and fleeing refugees.
It is estimated that between 1991 and 2001—a mere 30 years after gaining independence from Britain—more than 50 000 people died in Sierra Leone and over two million were displaced in neighboring countries as refugees. Their country had fallen into the wrong hands of military juntas that had no regard whatsoever for human life, the constitution and accompanying freedoms.
So, few believed the optimism of African Union leaders, and United Nations’ Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who asserted that “a key benchmark for peace” would indeed be achieved on November 17, 2012, the day the six–million-people West African nation successfully took to the polls to elect a president, parliamentarians and local councilors.
Notwithstanding a few eyebrow-raising moments—among them the main opposition’s initial refusal to accept the outcome of the election—Sierra Leoneans have since shown a determination to put one of Africa’s most deadly civil wars behind them, and are now rolling up their sleeves getting ready for reconciliation, national cohesion, infrastructure reconstruction and economic development.
Some skeptics still doubt whether the mineral-rich country has put its past behind it and is now officially open for business. They will get their answer from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who, following a staff mission to Sierra Leone towards the end of last year, found that economic growth had in fact already “strengthened in recent years, driven by expansion in agriculture, services and construction activities. Real GDP growth increased from 3.2% in 2009 to 6% in 2011. The coming on stream of iron ore production in late 2011 is expected to boost growth and exports significantly in 2012 and beyond. Inflationary pressures have trended downwards since mid-2011, aided by a sharp fall in non-food inflation, a tight monetary policy stance, and stability in the exchange rate. The external position is set to benefit from increased mining exports and reduced iron ore-related imports.”
On a continent that is fast getting global investors drooling, but frustrating them equally by making it tough to do business, Sierra Leone is among those countries that are trying to act fast to rectify that problem.
The recently released Doing Business 2013 report, published by the World Bank and its subsidiary, the International Finance Corporation, finds Sierra Leone to have improved its “ease of doing business” record, from number 148 in 2012 to 140 this year, out of a total of 185 economies surveyed.
But that’s not to say its all hunky dory. As the World Bank observes, “in spite of its remarkable strides and reforms since the war ended in 2002, problems of poor infrastructure—including roads and energy—low capacity, youth unemployment, high maternal and infant mortality, widespread rural impoverishment, impact of the global economic downturns, and lapses in public financial management and governance still persist.
“There is also the daunting challenge of enhancing transparency in managing the country’s vast natural resources,” World Bank economists say.
Following “candid and constructive discussions” with Sierra Leonean decision makers, IMF officials write: “The medium-term prospects are favorable. However, they are subject to downside risks related to the uncertain global economic outlook and potential adverse movements in commodity prices for Sierra Leone. To support broad-based growth and reduce the economy’s vulnerability to exogenous shocks, the authorities would need to sustain efforts to improve the business environment and address impediments to growth.
“Key among these are continued investment in infrastructure to support productivity gains in the private sector, increased economic diversification, and broader access to financial services, particularly for small- and medium-sized enterprises to create employment opportunities. The mission welcomed progress in the preparation of the authorities’ new poverty reduction and growth strategy, the Agenda for Prosperity, which outlines policies and reforms to address Sierra Leone’s developmental challenges.”
Citing as an example the performance of a program the IMF is sponsoring in the country, “the mission found that all quantitative performance criteria and indicative targets were met, and that progress was being made in implementing the government’s privatization agenda. With support from the IMF and other development partners, the authorities prepared legislation outlining fiscal regimes for natural resources.”
Diamonds from Sierra Leone is a Grammy-winning song released in 2005 by American rap musicians Kanye West and Jay-Z. It should be music to anyone’s ears that legislators are hard at work, trying to ensure that the erstwhile “blood” diamonds that the musicians sang about and which were once mined and sold ostensibly by warlords to buy weapons and fuel atrocities, will now benefit the country’s six million people, a great majority of whom remain dirt poor.
Sierra Leone is also endowed with some of the world’s best bauxite, rutile, gold and iron ore, but the country is also diversifying, moving away from a heavy dependence on minerals, although the pace of that diversification is still slow.
The economy is now being led by sectors other than minerals. The country’s official figures put agriculture’s contribution at 58.5% of the GDP, services industries at 10.4%, trade and tourism at 9.5%, wholesale and retail trade 9%, mining and quarrying at 4.5%, government services at 4%, manufacturing and handicrafts at 2%, construction 1.7% and electricity and water at 0.4%.
As to which of these sectors will take the lead in the drive to ensure that Sierra Leone no longer remains one of the poorest countries in the world, the answer may lie in whether the rest of the world sees the enormity of the challenge still facing the country as a hindrance, or an investment opportunity.

Tag: Sierra Leone

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

World Fair Ends With Festivities, Pyrotechnics And High Tech

At Least 92 People Killed In Oil Tanker Explosion In Sierra Leone

Blockchain At The Polls?

First Peace, Then Progress

Pregnant, Blamed , Banned

THe brit in sierra leone turning gangs into film crews

The Journey Of A Thousand Miles