“Sierra Leone’s Big Five Ambition Needs a Stronger Engine — One Built at Home”

By Chernor M. Jalloh

There are moments in a nation’s life when policy debates rise above technocratic ritual and become mirrors—reflecting not merely where we stand, but who we are and who we might yet become. Sitting in the conference hall of the Brookfield Hotel from December 8th to 10th, 2025, listening to delegates wrestle with the theme “Options for Raising Sustainable Development Financing,” I found myself revisiting a truth that has followed me throughout my academic and professional journey: Sierra Leone will not be transformed by plans alone. It will be transformed by the courage to convert internal resources into national power.

In many ways, this was also the unspoken thread running through the national analysis—an argument grounded not in sentiment, but in the hard logic of development thinkers from Rosenstein-Rodan to Hirschman, from Sen to Amsden: no nation rises without mobilising its own domestic surplus and directing it strategically through capable, disciplined institutions.

The Government’s Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP) 2024–2030 and its celebrated Big Five Game Changers—Feed Salone, Human Capital Development, Youth Employment, Technology & Infrastructure, and Public Service Transformation—carry the rhythm of ambition. Yet, as the conference discussions revealed with admirable candour, ambition without internal engines amounts to little more than elegant aspiration. What follows are the lessons that emerged—both sobering and galvanising.

Feed Salone: A Vision Still Searching for Its Structural Spine

The conference delegates spoke passionately about agriculture, yet a recurring anxiety echoed across panels: Where are the domestic linkages? The MTNDP promises mechanisation and higher yields. But, as Arthur Lewis reminded the world, true agricultural transformation requires structural linkages—farms connected to factories; production connected to processing; rural labour connected to industry; and farmers connected to predictable financing. Our agricultural sector still stands where Lewis warned against: trapped in the pre-industrial subsistence model, unable to generate the productivity shock that triggers national uplift.

Throughout the conference, panellists repeatedly returned to a single insight that served as a natural bridge to the broader development conversation: agriculture without domestic value-addition is merely toil; agriculture with agro-industrialisation becomes nation-building. As such, Feed Salone must be rooted not in episodic enthusiasm but in agrarian capitalism, local agro-processing clusters, secure land tenure, district-level innovation, and rural infrastructure financed not by donors but by Sierra Leone’s own domestic institutions.

Human Capital: Access Without Capability Is an Expensive Illusion

Building on the agricultural conversation, attention shifted to the quality of human capital required to sustain any meaningful transformation. One refrain returned with striking consistency: Amartya Sen’s enduring reminder that true development is not the mere provisioning of services but the expansion of human capabilities—the real freedoms people possess to live the lives they value. A child seated in a classroom, attendees argued, is not in itself a marker of progress; it is only when that child can compute, comprehend, innovate, and remain healthy that a nation can claim genuine advancement.

Yet, as panellists observed, the MTNDP still leans heavily on access while underplaying the deeper deficits that quietly erode the promise of human capital. Poor teaching quality continues to cripple learning outcomes. Fragile health financing leaves families one illness away from ruin. TVET systems remain misaligned with labour market needs. And the vast chasm between schooling and employability grows wider each year.

Drawing from international experience, delegates cited Rwanda and Ghana as compelling illustrations of what becomes possible when countries adopt performance compacts, teacher accountability mechanisms, domestic financing floors, and governance models anchored in measurable results. If Sierra Leone is to turn education and health into engines of national progress—rather than ornaments displayed in policy documents—it must be prepared to pursue the same rigorous, results-driven approach.

Youth Employment: A Promise Without an Industrial Foundation

Naturally, the conversation flowed from human capital to youth employment—another pillar of the Big Five. The Government’s pledge to create 500,000 jobs is undeniably electrifying. But as several speakers cautioned, job creation is never conjured by proclamation—it is constructed through the deliberate building of an industrial foundation. Gunnar Myrdal’s theory of cumulative causation loomed large in these discussions, reminding us that unless structural rigidities are addressed head-on, inequalities deepen and stagnation becomes self-reinforcing.

In Sierra Leone, these rigidities are painfully familiar: high energy costs, limited access to credit, expensive logistics, cumbersome regulatory burdens, and an industrial base that remains perilously thin. Panellists stressed that no country can generate meaningful youth employment atop such a hollow core. Nations like Morocco, Ethiopia, and Kenya succeeded because they pursued intentional industrial policy—linking procurement reforms, SME clustering, and skills development into holistic strategies.

The lesson flowing from these comparative insights was unmistakable: Sierra Leone must follow a similar path, for without industry, youth employment will remain a statistical illusion rather than a national breakthrough.

Infrastructure: Sovereignty Cannot Rest on Borrowed Steel

As the discussion moved toward economic enablers, one of the conference’s most sobering interventions centred on the nation’s approach to infrastructure financing. Roads, ports, digital systems—these are symbols of progress, but symbols can deceive. As Ha-Joon Chang argued in Kicking Away the Ladder, no country has modernised on the back of external loans alone; prosperous nations rose on domestic reinvestment, strategic protection, and targeted credit.

Sierra Leone’s infrastructure strategy falters because it remains heavily donor-dependent, enamoured with new project launches while neglecting maintenance, marginalising local contractors, and failing to mobilise long-term domestic capital. Across multiple sessions, participants called for a decisive pivot toward diaspora bonds, municipal financing, pension-fund investments, and sovereign infrastructure paper. The collective message was clear: infrastructure must be Sierra Leonean not only in geography but also in ownership and in the distribution of benefits.

Public Service Transformation: The Unspoken Political Economy

These structural debates naturally led the conference to governance—the arena where development either succeeds or collapses. As Douglass North reminded us, institutions are never neutral; they mirror the bargains, incentives, and constraints that shape political life. Without shifting these underlying incentives, no blueprint—no matter how sophisticated—will reorganise service delivery or modernise the state.

Delegates pointed to living models such as Singapore’s meritocratic civil service, Botswana’s resilient revenue authorities, and Rwanda’s performance-contract culture. If Sierra Leone is to follow this arc, it must carve out protected “islands of integrity”—the National Revenue Authority, Audit Service, procurement bodies, district councils—insulated from political interference and fortified by technocratic excellence. Without such islands, even the most elegant development plan collapses under the weight of institutional fragility.

What the Conference Clarified: The True Missing Link

After three days of robust reflection, a singular consensus emerged—one that echoed earlier critiques and provided connective tissue to all preceding discussions: Sierra Leone’s Achilles heel is neither a shortage of ideas nor a deficit of ambition. It is the absence of a coherent, politically safeguarded strategy for mobilising, managing, and directing domestic surplus.

To build a development engine that propels itself, Sierra Leone must firmly embrace the fundamentals:

• expanding domestic revenue;
• enforcing expenditure discipline and plugging leakages;
• strengthening local manufacturing and value-addition chains;
• financing infrastructure through sovereign means;
• linking industrial policy to youth employment;
• empowering local governments; and
• entrusting key institutions with independence and excellence.

This is how South Korea rose.

This is how Mauritius rose.

This is how Vietnam rose.

And this, too, is how Sierra Leone will rise—when the nation’s internal engine becomes more powerful than its external lifeline.

A Call to Statesmanship

In the end, the conference served as a powerful reminder that development choices are moral choices. They reflect who we are, whose futures we prioritise, and how courageously we confront structural truths. The MTNDP is a promising document. The Big Five is an inspiring national story. Yet neither will alter Sierra Leone’s destiny without political resolve, disciplined institutions, and a national commitment to raising sustainable development from within.

Thus, to sum up: this is a moment for statesmanship, not slogans; a moment to reinforce the nation’s core; a moment to choose domestic capability over external dependence; a moment to build a development engine that roars even when donors whisper. Sierra Leone’s future will not be imported. It must be cultivated, financed, protected, and advanced by Sierra Leoneans themselves.

The work begins now.

Copyright –Published in Expo Times News on Wednesday, 17th December 2025 (ExpoTimes News – Expo Media Group (expomediasl.com)