Story by Nick Ferris
Ask most people in the UK what they associate with the small west African nation of Sierra Leone, and it’s likely it will be one of three things: blood diamonds, Ebola, or the country’s civil war, which killed an estimated 50,000 people between 1991 and 2002. It’s a set of associations that is understandably frustrating for the country’s leaders.
Cuts to overseas aid announced this year have also hit Sierra Leone hard, leaving the government scrambling to fill gaps, particularly in healthcare. The UK has traditionally been the largest bilateral donor to Sierra Leone, and the country is already feeling the effects of Britain reducing its aid budget from 0.5 to 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income, especially in healthcare and education for girls, says Sengeh. The cuts sought by Donald Trump in the US have also had an impact.
Sierra Leoneans are seen at Dove Cot Market in the country’s capital, Freetown, earlier this year (AFP/Getty)
But the chief minister does not want to dwell on the negative: he was in London to make the case that the country is open for business, arguing that the time is right 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 partnerships: And that’s 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 good news for governments is that many African countries are slowly but surely becoming more attractive for private investors. Speaking at an event held last week by the African Private Capital Association (AVCA), Phillipp Hein, the head of global climate investments at DEG, the German government-backed development finance institute, told The Independent that the volatility seen in the post-pandemic years has now calmed, and we appear to now be in “quite a stable phase in terms of macroeconomic risk”.
Hein warned, though, that aid cuts could begin to have an impact on that stability in the months ahead as financial pressures take hold. “If some of these governments depended heavily on aid to balance their budgets, and they then run into budget problems, this could have really negative impacts on the investor environment,” he said. “We are monitoring this very closely.”
Climate crunch point
With extreme weather becoming more pronounced and limited money available to respond, another key risk faced by Sierra Leone comes in the form of the climate crisis, with the country regularly ranked among the top 10 most climate vulnerable in the world. “Early rains, late rains, no rains, we are seeing them all,” says Sengeh.
Adapting to new climate realities is an area that countries will struggle to achieve without aid. “A capitalist investor wants to break even in year seven and then earn 15 or 20 per cent return,” explains Sengeh, but protecting communities with climate-resilient agriculture or strengthening biodiversity by protecting mangroves is an altogether different proposition.
Countries across the region report that they are struggling to face up to the climate adaptation challenge given the paltry level of international adaptation finance that is available.
Sierra Leone also faces difficult decisions around whether to exploit its natural assets in pursuit of development. The country’s forests lie on considerable mineral deposits – and Sengeh believes it is ultimately up to how wealthy nations decide to act when it comes things like financing to adapt to the climate crisis.
“Do you use the mineral assets as insurance and receive climate financing from wealthy countries to protect the forests, or do you cut the forests and get the minerals that you need for your country’s development,” he says. “These are tough questions that we need to face, which developing countries 50 years ago did not.”
A key moment for discussions is to come at the annual UN climate conference, COP30, which is taking place in Brazil in November. Climate diplomacy has taken a body blow this year with Trump’s decision to remove the US from the Paris Agreement – but Sengeh says that he wants Sierra Leone to stick to the climate track regardless of 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 children. “
This article was produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
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Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/we-are-more-than-blood-diamonds-and-ebola-sierra-leone-seeks-investment-in-a-post-aid-world/ar-AA1P6b