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AAsk most people in the UK what connection they have to the small West African country Sierra LeoneAnd it’s likely that it will be one of three things: blood diamond, EbolaOr the country’s civil war, which killed an estimated 50,000 people between 1991 and 2002. This is a group of unions that are clearly disappointing to the country’s leaders.
“I was just here AndAll over the place, and when you meet someone and say, ‘I’m from Sierra Leone’, they say, ‘Oh yes blood diamonds’. This wasn’t even in 2000 or 2010, this was last week,” says David Sengah, Sierra Leone’s chief minister, a position equivalent to prime minister. “These stories get stuck in people’s minds until you’re able to replace them with a new one.”
A former IBM research scientist with a PhD from MIT, and – until recently – long, awesome hair, the 39-year-old Sengeh is not your typical world leader. he got Independent at a summit held in London this month to boost investment in his country, whose per capita gross domestic product is just $980 (£730) this year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Given how risk averse investors are, it is safe to say that the global financial system is Currently not working in the interest of the countrySengeh shared an anecdote of an investor asking one of the main global credit rating agencies what their score was for Sierra Leone, only to find out the agency did not even have a profile for the country on their system.
Foreign aid cuts announced this year have also hit Sierra Leone hard, leaving the government struggling to fill the gaps. especially in healthcareBritain has traditionally been Sierra Leone’s largest bilateral donor, and the country is already feeling the effects of Britain’s reduced its aid budget from 0.5 to 0.3 percent Sengeh says that gross national income, especially in health care and education for girls. deduction sought by donald trump America has also been affected.
But the chief minister doesn’t want to dwell on the negative: he was in London to argue that the country is open for business, arguing that it is the right time for foreign investment to replace foreign aid as the main flow of capital into the country.
“Sierra Leone is ready for investment and open for partnership: and this is not a slogan but a statement of intent, backed by real numbers and stories,” he says. “We have to transition from aid to investment.”
The case for this change is clear: in the years since its civil war, Sierra Leone has worked hard to establish a reputation for relative stability and good governance. The country continues to hold regular multi-party elections, while recently updating the year on which the country’s GDP is calculated – known as rebasing, allowing the use of more recent prices – has helped bring the country’s national debt down to a more manageable level. The government is also in the midst of a land reform programme, formalizing and digitizing land records, while post-Covid inflation has now reduced from 50 per cent to 5 per cent.
Growth this year is projected to reach a healthy – though not extraordinary – 4.4 percent. But according to the British International Investment (BII), British Development Finance Institute supported by the Foreign Office Which co-hosted the London Sierra Leone Summit, conditions are now ready for foreign investors to come in and take the economy to new heights.
“It is a beautiful country, its economy is booming, its population is bright and it has a vibrant private sector, led by courageous and determined entrepreneurs,” says Chris Chizutomi, head of the Africa program at the BII. He also praised the country’s government for “streamlining regulation and increasing transparency.”
President Julius Maada Bio, a progressive who survived a coup attempt in 2022, has set a goal of classifying the country as “middle income” by 2039. Key policies to drive this include spending a fifth of the national budget on education and launching a $50 million (£37.3 million) national agriculture plan – “because there is no country that has developed without building this human capacity and feeding itself,” Sengeh explains.
The BII, which aims to invest UK public money in developing countries, is a top investor in the country, investing £100 million since 2009. Recent deals in the country include funding for a 50MW solar plant that is set to boost the country’s electricity supply by 30 per cent, and $15m (£11.2m) for Miro, a sustainable wood processing company.
Several other Sierra Leonean companies in the agriculture, minerals and manufacturing sectors made proposals to investors at the London summit. Sierra Leone is also building its first wind farm in a project backed by Octopus Energy and Hollywood actor Idris Elba, whose father was Sierra Leonean. Currently only five percent of the country’s rural population has access to electricity.
sengeh accepts it Aid cuts are having a big impact“There is still a huge gap in our health budget, with money missing for essential medicines, especially in rural areas,” he says. World 2030 sustainable development goals – which are UN-backed goals from 2015 including “no poverty,”zero hunger”, and “clean water and sanitation” – look further afield than ever before, he adds.
But rather than lament over lost funding, Sengeh believes the focus should now be on new types of investment that can help the country build resilience. “Governments across Africa are realizing that now is the time to really wake up and think about how we can become self-reliant,” Sengeh says. “We need to think about areas like infrastructure, where the private sector can play a bigger role.”
The good news for governments is that many African countries are slowly but surely becoming more attractive to private investors. Speaking at an event organized last week by the African Private Capital Association (AVCA), Philipp Hein, head of global climate investing at German government-backed development finance institution DEG, explained Independent The volatility seen in the years following the pandemic has now subsided, and we are now in a “fairly stable phase in terms of macroeconomic risks”.
However, Hein warned that aid cuts could begin to impact stability in the coming months as financial pressures increase. “If some of these governments rely too heavily on aid to balance their budgets, and then they have budget problems, that could have a really negative impact on the investor climate,” he said. “We’re monitoring this very closely.”
climate crisis point
With extreme weather becoming more pronounced and limited funds available to respond, another major risk facing Sierra Leone comes in the form of the climate crisis, in which the country is regularly ranked. Top 10 places with the highest climate risks in the world“Early rain, late rain, no rain, we are seeing all of these,” says Sengeh.
Adapting to new climate realities is an area that countries will struggle to achieve without aid. “A capitalist investor might want to break even in the seventh year and then earn 15 or 20 percent returns, but protecting communities with climate-resilient agriculture or strengthening biodiversity by protecting mangroves is a completely different proposition,” explains Sengeh.
Countries across the region report that they are struggling to meet the climate adaptation challenge given negligible level of international adaptation finance available,
Sierra Leone also faces difficult decisions about whether to exploit its natural resources for development. The country’s forests sit on considerable mineral reserves – and Sengeh believes it ultimately depends on how the rich nation decides to act when it comes to things like financing to adapt to the climate crisis.
“Do you use mineral assets as insurance and get climate financing from wealthy countries to protect forests, or do you cut down forests and get the minerals you need to develop your country,” he says. “These are difficult questions we need to face, ones that developing countries did not face 50 years ago.”
A key moment in the discussion is coming to the annual UN climate conference, COP30, taking place in Brazil in November. Climate diplomacy has suffered a major setback this year Trump’s decision to withdraw America from Paris Agreement – But Sengeh says he wants Sierra Leone to stay on the climate track, no matter what happens elsewhere in the world.
“Countries like Sierra Leone, which have visionary leadership, understand that we need to protect the environment, not because of what other countries are doing,” he says. “We’re doing it for ourselves and our kids.”
This article was produced as part of The Independent Rethinking global aid Project