In the eastern Sierra Leonean community of Lambayama, rice paddies are carved far into the landscape before being abruptly halted by distant hills. Aside from a paved road that draws a grey line through the green, swampy valley, it looks much as it did a century ago.

Emmanuel Kargbo, a 26-year-old farmer, pushes a motorised soil tiller recently given to his farming cooperative. Credit: Damon Van der Linde/IPS

But under the sound of leaves rustling in the wind and chirping insects is the distant low hum of tilling machinery, a signal of the gradually changing way farmers are growing and selling this West African nation’s staple food.

The Smallholder Commercialisation Programme (SCP) is trying to put local farmers back in control of the country’s most-consumed crop. This government-run programme is in its fifth year of operation, and farmers say they are just beginning to discover there is money to be made in agriculture. Some components of the SCP are supported by the European Union and other development partners.

“Before, there was no profit. We had enough to eat, but not enough to sell,” said Zainab Makabu, who started farming rice to support her four children. “Now, we harvest, we sell some, we pay our children’s school fees and we eat some. Without this farming, we couldn’t educate our children.”

People in Sierra Leone often say that if they have not eaten rice, it is as if they have not eaten at all. Data from the 2009 “Economics of Rice Production in Sierra Leone” report, funded by the Soros Economic Development Fund, states that at least 40 percent is still imported from other countries like Pakistan, Thailand and neighbouring Guinea.

Increasing local rice production not only helps keep prices more stable, but also promotes national food security. Agriculture contributes about 50 percent of the country’s GDP and employs over 75 percent of the national work force. Still, most of the small farming in Sierra Leone is for sustenance – the farmers who produce it consume it or trade it without much money ever changing hands.

The SCP is trying to change the way farmers operate in three ways: by mechanising production, organising individuals, and promoting business. Through the programme, farmers are given seeds, machines, fertilisers, and training. The goal is to increase the crop yield and provide mechanisms that facilitate selling the product on the market.

“On the local level, small scale farmers are trying to expand on their production level, which is the thrust of the policy objective – to increase productivity through the farmer-based organisation. In the past, they were not getting the kind of requisite training that would help them increase their production levels. But now we see the farmers are getting the requisite training,” said Joseph Tholly, the District Agricultural Officer for the Lambayama community.

He added that previously farmers would just plant crops for their own consumption.

“They weren’t business-minded,” said Tholly. “In the past, you would only see old people involved in agriculture, but now we also see youth going into all different components of the business.”

Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war hit small farmers hard. Most of the fighting took place in rural areas, forcing many farmers to flee their land for Freetown, the capital city. But the city is congested with traffic and people, and there is not enough work to go around.

Tholly says the SCP programme tries to draw people back to the countryside with the potential of better pay and a higher quality of life. And it may be working. When the programme began, about 10 percent of people in his district earned their living from agriculture. Today, the number is closer to 60 percent.

“I’ve learned how to work this machinery and at the end of the day, I’m making a bigger profit for myself and my family,” said Emmanuel Kargbo, a 26-year-old farmer. “I don’t plan to do any other kind of work.”

On a local level, the hub of the SCP is the Agricultural Business Centre (ABC). These clusters of buildings house the machinery to harvest and process crops, store the rice before selling it, and act as the administrative centre for farming collectives.

Each farmer makes a contribution of rice every year, which the ABC sells, putting the money in an account to be used for things like equipment maintenance. In Lambayama, Joseph Fecah manages the finances for one of the country’s 108 ABCs. He says they have not only been able to make a profit through the commercialisation programme, but have used this money to build an additional storeroom with no assistance from the government.

“It is an expansion on traditional farming. Initially they were doing it on a small scale but the government is encouraging us to do farming on a larger scale,” said Fecah. “We have money going in constantly. We’re doing well, for now.”

The EU has supported development initiatives in Sierra Leone for the past 40 years, and has been involved in the small-scale agriculture programme since its inception. Through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), the EU provides 16 million euros a year in donations for training and investment in initiatives like the SCP.

The programme has had its challenges, and with a 25-year plan, there is a long way to go. Farmers say they need more donations in the form of transportation to move their products, and better packaging to further increase the commercial viability.

**The original story that moved on Apr. 12 has been re-issued with new sources.

By Damon van der Linde, Mustapha Dumbuya, and - -
FREETOWN, Mar 20 2012 (IPS)

Sierra Leone is instituting major reforms to its education system after the country reported some of the poorest academic results in West Africa. It will start with adding an extra year to the end of secondary school beginning in 2013, and nearly doubling daily classroom hours.

Sierra Leone is instituting major reforms to its education system after the country reported some of the poorest academic results in West Africa. Credit: Damon van der Linde/IPS

Every year, Sierra Leonean students sit for the standardised West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in their final year of secondary school to determine their eligibility for college and university.

The WASSCE covers not only Sierra Leone, but also other Anglophone West African countries: Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and the Gambia. This makes competition for entry to international institutions even steeper.

In 2008, about one percent of Sierra Leonean WASSCE entrants scored above what the West African Examination Council (WAEC) considers a passing grade in five subjects, including compulsory English and Mathematics.

Sheriff Sapateh, the head of the Sierra Leone WAEC national office, said that if at least 25 percent of students passed the exam, he would consider that an adequate performance for the country.

“After I published the Chief Examiner’s Report, the government became worried and had to look into it,” says Sapateh.

The government reacted by creating the Gbamanja Commission of Inquiry to determine exactly where the education system went wrong, and what could be done to improve it.

Sapateh says the civil war in Sierra Leone also contributed both directly and indirectly to the poor results of the 2008 exams. Because the war lasted from 1990 to 2001, many students spent their formative school years studying in extremely difficult conditions, experiencing sporadic school closures.

To compound this problem, many qualified teachers fled the country, and those who replaced them were rushed through “crash” training programmes. Though conditions have improved in recent years, much of the residual wartime infrastructure, policies and practices exist to this day.

“Everybody contributed to the poor performance: the community, the home, the children themselves, the school, teachers, and even the government could have done more,” says Dele Sannoh, head of the Department of Education Studies at the University of Sierra Leone’s Fourah Bay College, and member of the Gbamanja Commission.

At the moment, students attend senior secondary school for three years. One of the recommendations that came out of the inquiry was to give senior secondary school pupils an extra year of school before sitting for the WASSCE exams, and increasing the school day from four to seven hours a day.

This means that Sierra Leone will not be holding a public WASSCE this year, keeping most students slated to graduate secondary school in 2012 out of university for an extra year.

The theory behind adding another year of secondary school has much to do with what education specialists call “contact time,” which simply refers to the number of hours students are in the classroom with a teacher.

“The rationale is that we found that there was inadequate work given to that level,” says Sannoh. “Let’s give them an opportunity to have more time in school. We’re hoping that this will work, but if they still waste time, or the teachers are not committed to their work, we’ll go back to square one.”

Ghana attempted a similar reform in 2008. The system was in place for a year, but Sannoh says there were political undertones to the reform and when there was a change in government, the new administration immediately reverted to the old system.

“I think if they had given it time, it probably could have given the results they wanted,” says Sannoh.

Not all schools are performing equally. The Annie Walsh Memorial Senior Secondary School consistently achieves higher than average results for the WASSCE in Sierra Leone. Principal Ophelia Morrison says that two-thirds of her 300 to 400 students regularly pass the exam.

“My school is a ‘Grade A’ school. I have high flyers in my school and I want to believe the recommendation of an additional year does not apply to my school; they should have come up with something else,” says Morrison. “My opinion is that principals should have been interviewed so that our views could have been looked into rather than coming up with a generalised trend.”

Sierra Leonean students will still be able to write the private WASSCE exam in 2013, but only if they pay for it. But, at a cost that comes close to a decent monthly salary of 80 dollars, it is prohibitively expensive for many students.

Imran Sesay is an 18-year-old student at the Muslim Brotherhood Secondary School, and will be a part of the first group of students to stay for an additional year. Because he pays for his own school fees – which are not covered by the government – and living expenses, he says he does not think he will be able to afford the additional costs. In Sierra Leone education costs 25 dollars a year in fees.

“If they add one more year I’ll have to drop out,” he says. “I’m on the street every day trying to find money for survival and at the same time paying my fees.”

This increase in contact time is part of a larger series of reforms, which include changes to teacher training and building teaching infrastructure like school buildings, libraries and computers. Teachers complain about being underpaid, while education administrations say teachers are undertrained.

Though the government says it has increased spending in public education by 36 percent since 2008, financial constraints remain a common complaint throughout all levels of the education system.

“There are so many facets to look at in the education system. You look at the equipment, you look at the quality of the teachers, and the calibre of the teachers. We are doing all of that simultaneously. We are improving the government resources made available to the school, within the limitation of what the government has to offer,” says Kamara.

Excerpt:

Fifty years ago when Sierra Leone gained independence after 150 years of colonial rule, with it came a feeling of optimism that along with a newfound control of its governance, the country would profit from its ample endowment of natural resources, like timber, fish, minerals and oil. Instead, in the last 50 years, the country has had 13 military coups and an 11-year civil war that left the economy in ruins and the country heavily reliant on foreign donor funding.

Participants at the Sierra Leone Conference on Development and Transformation outlining recommendations on how to develop of the country. Credit: Damon van der Linde/IPS

Following the Sierra Leone Conference on Development and Transformation in Freetown, a communiqué is being submitted to parliament outlining recommendations on how to develop of the country over the next 50 years.

“We were celebrating 50 years of independence, and in those 50 years, we have seen the economy and society go down to the point where we were in conflict. We had all the elements to become prosperous, but we did not become prosperous,” said Herbert McLeod, the Conference’s national coordinator. The country gained independence on from Britain on Apr. 27, 1951. “Though we emerged from conflict, we are still struggling to get our foothold. The question is: if we continue to do what we did before, is there any guarantee we will not go down the same road?”

And in spite of the country’s mineral wealth, Sierra Leone remains nearly at the bottom of the Human Development Index, ranking 180 of 187 countries in providing its citizens with a long and healthy life, education and a decent standard of living.

Many of the communiqué’s recommendations for improving the economy differ from the growing push towards increased foreign investment in mining, instead focusing on the long-term benefits of health, education and infrastructure. In fact, it suggests that no new mineral extraction agreements should be made by the government without first conducting a public comprehensive analysis of the quantity and amount of the resources to be exploited.

“We’ve had a system that was not set up for a rapidly growing economy that would be prosperous, it was a system set up to ensure we have a quite country where resources could be extracted with us saying very little,” said McLeod. “The exploitation of these resources could continue to have dangerous consequences if they are not managed well. You could have an already unequal society become more unequal as the benefits accrue to only a small section of the population.”

The recommendations give specific attention to women, who continue to be under represented in politics and other positions of power. These include a mandatory 30 percent representation of women in political office, a review of Sierra Leone’s 1991 constitution, and the creation of an autonomous “Women’s Commission” in government.

“Women in Sierra Leone suffer from low literacy, low status, sexual exploitation and harassment,” said Nasu Fofana, the United Nations Population Fund programme manager for Gender and Advocacy in Sierra Leone. “Women are one of the core natural resources we have as a country, but we do not have the capacity to address issues that deal specifically with women and girls.”

This communiqué advocates the creation of a “citizen’s committee,” headed by the President of the Republic. Questions have been raised by the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), suggesting that this is a political tool for President Ernest Bai Koroma and the ruling All People’s Congress (APC). Though elections will not be held until November 2012, several violent clashes between supporters of the APC and opposition SLPP have already left some feeling like the country is at risk of being divided along partisan lines.

“The conference was a venture worth taking, but we have to have all political parties vet the documents, give their input and sign off on them,” said Thomas Babadi, who works for the Forum of Sierra Leonean Youth Network. “This should be a people’s manifesto that neither political parties nor elected representatives deviate from.”

McLeod insists that while governments have a responsibility to work in the best interest of the people, changes that lead to development will have to come from the citizens themselves.

“We have blamed politicians but we should have been blaming ourselves,” said McLeod. “This is not a recommendation for the government; this is for the people of Sierra Leone.”

From here, organisers say a draft of the communiqué will be finalised before being submitted to parliament, where an implementation strategy can be put in place. This, however, is not an aspect that has yet been addressed in these recommendations.

“Everything they’ve said is good on paper, but I’m not sure of the effectiveness of this conference,” said Hawanatu Sheriff, an 18-year-old secondary school student who attended the conference as the winner of a national essay-writing competition. “If we want to change in this country we all have to change our attitude and be accountable for everything we do.”

Excerpt:

The launch of Sierra Leone’s first online mining database in West Africa comes with a promise to increase transparency and accountability in the country’s rich natural resource sector.

Sierra Leone’s mining industry has a long history of unregulated operations. Credit: USAID

“This system will stamp out all forms of malpractice in terms of licensing, financial management and general information pertaining to the mining sector,” said Minister of Mines and Mineral Resources Minkailu Mansaray. “The public should be aware of what mining companies pay to the government and what the government receives from mining and exploration companies.”

Launched on Jan. 19, the Government of Sierra Leone Online Repository System was funded by the European Union, and developed by the government and international donors, including the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), the United Nations Development Programme, the Revenue Development Foundation and the World Bank.

The purpose of the system is to have information on all revenue data for the country’s extractive industry – payments made for licenses, royalties, and contributions to local chiefdoms – collected, recorded and published for public accessibility. It also shows whether mining companies have been authorised to legally operate in the country.

For instance, the website shows Koidu Holdings, a South African company currently operating the largest diamond mining operation in Sierra Leone, made a cash payment of 200,000 dollars on Jan. 11.

Sierra Leone’s mining industry has a long history of unregulated operations, most notably the “blood diamonds” which were found to be partially responsible for fuelling the country’s 11-year civil war.

Apart from diamonds, Sierra Leone has significant depots of other minerals, including iron ore, bauxite, rutile and gold. In late 2011, African Minerals and London mining began the extraction of iron ore in the country for the first time in 30 years. According to the government’s projected budget for 2012, this mineral alone could contribute to more than 50 percent increase in the country’s GDP next year.

This Online Repository System is also part of the move to make Sierra Leone compliant with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which requires the timely publication of payments made by mining companies to government, as well as revenues generated from the projects.

Until now, information relating to mining agreement between the government and natural resource extraction companies was kept at the Ministry of Mines on paper documents that were neither secure nor accurate. In fact, old records were so poorly kept that the new system is only able to include information gathered after 2010.

“Before the advent of this system when licenses and payment details were handled with paperwork, some payment details (went) missing and receipts were not found,” said Alusine Timbo, the Manager of the Online Repository System.

Abu Brima is the Country Director of the Network Movement for Justice and Development, an organisation that has in the past taken a critical stance towards the extractive industry in Sierra Leone – particularly in regard to the transparency of deals struck between the government and foreign-owned mining companies.

He says that any move towards a more public record of mining activities is a step in the right direction, but is concerned about the mechanisms in place that will ensure timely and accurate posting of information.

“It’s what goes into the system that is recorded and is what people see. The actual people that gather the information, that collect the data, is what needs to be watched very carefully,” says Brima. “When you have the people on the ground collecting the data who are not being paid well and whose work conditions are terrible, you obviously run the risk of not getting the best out of the system.”

The responsibility for ensuring the information is collected and reported falls on the government’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) in offices around the country, in cooperation with the mining companies themselves. Sierra Leone is yet to enact its Freedom of Information Law that would constitutionally guarantee access to government records, like the original documents regarding mining agreements and transactions.

“As much as the system is promised to address issues of corruption, I don’t think it will holistically address the problem when there is the tendency for the officials of the ministry to only upload information that is in their own interest and not crucial information that the public will want to know about,” said Mohammed Konneh, Secretary General of the Association of Journalists on Mining and Extractives.

“Without the law the system will not work well more so the people that are responsible to run the system will in some cases will be afraid to put certain information that the government considers confidential,” he said.

Excerpt: