We are connected in rebuilding Africa’s nations

Peace is an essential ingredient for sustainable development – but it doesn’t always come easy. It takes a lot of sacrifice, patience, courage and determination to achieve.

Rebuilding a nation is no easy feat.

When I was elected president of Sierra Leone in 2007, my government and I were tasked with rebuilding a country devastated by 11 years of civil war that had ended five years prior to my appointment. It was a Herculean task, but not impossible. It saw us transform Sierra Leone from a fragile post-war state into the most peaceful country in West Africa. Many factors contributed towards this successful transition.

First was our decision as government to bridge the divides in our body politics. Regardless of which region or tribe, we believed that individuals had a role to play.

The media, civil society, opposition supporters and leaders enjoyed the liberty to hold my government accountable – we had no political prisoners or prisoners of conscience.

I took a deliberate decision to treat my predecessor, president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, and his deputy, Solomon Berewa, well, despite our differences.

I aimed at an inclusive approach, including members of the opposition in my first delegation to Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). I took the minority leader in parliament with me to my first international investment forum in the UK, causing one British cabinet minister to remark that such magnanimity was unheard of in their own politics. I also nominated minority leader Bernadette Lahai to lead ECOWAS.

We emphasised openness and transparency in governance. The Open Government Initiative created a platform for the public to contribute to policy formulation.

We reformed the anti-corruption legislation, giving more autonomy to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC). It has the power not only to investigate but also to prosecute: we created an institution to fight corruption and strengthen transparency. We designed and rolled out the Pay No Bribe Campaign, with tremendous results.

In 2010 and 2012, as a result of the steps taken to address corruption, we were reviewed by Thailand and Benin. With the ACC acting as a politically blind institution, prosecuting and convicting members of all political parties, credibility and transparency were institutionalised.

We enacted the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and established the Access to Information Commission, ensuring that ordinary citizens could seek and obtain information otherwise considered classified.

We were so confident of our work that I subjected my government to the African Peer Review Mechanism, and we received important reviews from president Obama who, in his “Address to the African People” (during a 2015 visit to Africa), said: “Sierra Leone was among countries in Africa where democracy had taken root”.Also, Sierra Leone was recognised as the third most improved in the region in terms of safety and the rule of law, participation and human rights as per the Ibrahim Index of African Governance

Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki -moon once remarked that Sierra Leone was a storehouse of lessons in peacebuilding and consolidation in post-conflict countries.

Our peacebuilding and peacekeeping missions with the UN were so successful that Sierra Leone exported them to train other countries. Sierra Leone was ranked most peaceful in the region and third in Africa.

With such openness, good governance and peacefulness, we sent the right signals to the world that Sierra Leone was open for business. The result was unprecedented, with the arrival of foreign direct investment (FDI), especially in the agriculture and extractive industry, where thousands of job opportunities were created for our youth.

Security begets development and vice versa. Owing to those actions on good governance, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability, national unity and peace were unprecedented FDI inflows. We were rated one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

We used the revenues to embark on a massive infrastructural development programme, and some of my flagship projects touched on every region and every district.

We subsidised education, offered automatic university scholarships to females studying in the sciences and to people with a disability; supported the establishment of three universities; and increased salaries for public sector workers.

I also emphasised leveraging every opportunity to expand and grow our economy. This first meant marketing Sierra Leone as a favourable business destination. For decades, we had mostly depended on the extractive industry – gold and diamonds cannot be in abundance forever. The agriculture sector, which used to account for about 45% of GDP, was mostly underdeveloped and subsistence-based.

We introduced agricultural commercialisation through smallholder farmers’ schemes – intensifying production and promoting value addition of major crops such as rice, cocoa, coffee and cassava. We also embarked on the most significant road infrastructure programme in the history of the country. Major cities were linked to the capital by hundreds of kilometres of tarred roads and thousands of kilometres of feeder roads, linking producing areas to big market centres.

Our development plan – the Agenda for Prosperity – was encapsulated into pillars, namely: economic diversification, natural resources management, human development, competitiveness, employment, social protection, and gender and women’s empowerment.

My wife Sia embarked on campaigns aimed at protecting women and girls’ rights, especially regarding early child marriage and expanding their access to healthcare services. Her advocacy influenced the enactment of the three Gender Acts, which were genuinely revolutionary in guaranteeing the rights of women in Sierra Leone.

These and other social interventions changed the dynamics and put us on a stable growth trajectory – enroute to attaining middle-income status. The sheer scale and breadth of these development programmes, and their national appeal, along with the job opportunities, engendered peace and security.

Peace is an essential ingredient for sustainable development – but it doesn’t always come easily. It takes sacrifice, patience, courage and determination to achieve. Fortunately for Sierra Leone, there was already the realization that our 11-year civil war only succeeded in reversing whatever gains had been made after independence. The cost to human lives was colossal, and because we suffered those atrocities that made our war the most atrocious in modern times, the penultimate decision was to say: never again!

The order we enjoyed during my tenure as president was not due to my singular efforts but through the contributions and sacrifices made by every critical stakeholder.

The Africa of today faces many security challenges. Together, we must do everything to prevent conflict on the continent. Peace is what we need to be able to focus on our continent’s development aspirations of harnessing the youth dividend because of the opportunities in ICTs; the cultivation of arable land for agricultural productivity; transformation; commercialisation and other job creation opportunities.

I have continued to help foster peace, deepen democracy, and promote responsible environmental practices. I have availed myself to ECOWAS, the Commonwealth and the UN to support our collective search for peace, good governance, democracy and sustainable development. I have joined the Campaign for Nature’s global steering committee to lend my energy and voice to global concerns for better management of our environment. I continue to work with civil society in devising faster and better ways to strengthen Africa’s economic performance.

We are one world; we are all so connected. We can see this reality with this global pandemic. We have shared interests in all of what we do.