By Joseph A. Kamanda
Deliberate efforts by donor communities and development partners such as major international financial institutions as the United Kingdom Department for International Development, World Bank and the International Fund in snail pacing economic development and financial stability in developing African countries are largely generating curious global concerns especially when they face governments that do not clearly know their right governance and leadership priorities, ie when a state does not know its people’s needs the donor communities will surely mess you up.
Of course you don’t expect governance set goals if there is any one working in national interests when the entire system was brought in by the dictates of the international systems through their regime change agents and representatives – Commonwealth, the United Nations, the Economic Communities of West African States, the African Union etc. all of whom paved the way for the ‘by all means’ coming in of failed president Julius Maada Bio led Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP)’s administration under the guise of a smooth democratic transition from a sitting regime to an opposition party.
Thus imposed sufferings on vulnerable and innocent Sierra Leoneans masses could hardly be distance from those devilish international system operatives and their pay masters the World Bank, the UKAID and the IMF. They buried their conspiracies against the last All People’s Congress (APC) under the guise of international diplomacies to a point of even hypocritically discouraging the then government’s giant infrastructural project for the construction of the Mamama International Airport, on grounds of its so-called negative financial and economic implications on the country, even though the entire project was going to be fully funded by the government of the People’s Republic of China before it was sadly cancelled by president Bio.
He actually dumped the mainland airport project with hopes of building Lungi Bridge across the ocean but the over sea bridge deal proposal is still far from reality barely a year ago since it was unveiled. Is it that nobody is interested in the bidding remains a huge question to be answered by the government.
Now the same international systems as development partners who condemned the mainland airport project are watching president Bio and his government struggling to convince investors on how they could countenance the Lungi Bridge project and explore other investments opportunities but could not simply because of the financial cost involved in constructing a bridge across the sea, compared to what would have been the cost of building the mainland airport.
It is imaginable how hypocritical the international systems and donor community partners of Sierra Leone national development progress have exposed themselves in recent years. Sierra Leone’s colonial master the United Kingdom and its strong ally the United States always use their agents the UKAID, IMF, World Bank and other to dictate the pace of improvement in countries with weaker economies and discourage all forms of development aids from their arch rivals from China who always dishes large quantum of development programmes in Sierra Leone and Africa as a whole.
And for the mainland international airport, the government of the People’s Republic of China had wanted to construct the ultra modern facility on a mutual trust and friendly conditions between the two countries with no string attach but the politics of ‘this is our time’ backed by venom for the destruction of the legacies of the last administration, largely being propagated by the then main opposition SLPP and president Bio himself could not allow that massive national development project to be actualize because the Lungi Bridge dream.
This is exactly what Sierra Leone is presently suffering from in the hands of Britain and the United States under the unsuccessful leadership of president Bio led SLPP government due to their facilitated regime change imposed on the country.
These systems and their international financial institutions always position themselves as strong development partners to Sierra Leone in the areas of helping the country in its democratic consolidations, alleviate poverty, eradicate of corruption, promote socio-economic development, and to some extent improve the living standards of the people, which are still far from the realities on the ground in Freetown as well as other parts of the developing nation with less than eight million people. Their tricks are always the same everywhere because they always have vested interests elsewhere and most times urge weaker economies to succumb to their dictates, which is what president Bio didn’t know about UKAID the IMF, the World Bank and their political state lords in the UK and the US. But he is learning slowly to catch up now that he is directly dealing with them at the suffering of poor Sierra Leoneans under his scrawny and ineptitude presidency ever in the history of the country.
One hardly believes nor actually realizes the roles of IMF, World Bank and the UKAID including their surrogates’ developmental programmes and activities until you visit the country where they always claimed to have spend so much on improving the living standards, more so in closed to two now of the SLPP government is at the helm of state governance affairs. A regime purporting to have made giant gains at the high expectations and hopes of the deceived masses, while in actual fact there has been no progress at all order than imposed poverty, destitutions gross ‘violations’ and ‘blatant flouting of democratic procedures’ and ‘less regards for the rule of law’ under the canopies of democratic lords in the United Kingdom and in the United States with their insincere financial institutions, playing to gallery and paying mere lip services to the burning issues of the day.
No matter what happens back home to the people in Sierra Leone, they are not that concerns as long as their stooges the present government in power can dance to their tunes they are fine and good with that, as it is rightly unfolding here now at the detriments of the people.
All the chief executive cares about are handouts he periodically receives from his UK and US donor allies to fund his second term campaign projects-the ‘selective’ anti-corruption battle and the ‘messy’ free education, while the masses go to bed on empty stomach as if those two sectors are the only areas of public service deliveries that necessitate the much expected change president Bio promised during his campaign.
Sierra Leone is vulnerable to such deceptions in that it hardly goes along with its national development programmes without support of those dictatorial financial institutions, whiles their South East Asian counterpart, from the People’s Republic of China has always scored impressive marks from all fronts in pushing development progress in Sierra Leone.
Comparatively, China for one thing it is always known for coming up with several goodies including huge financial doles for developing countries including those of us in West Africa Liberia, Nigeria, The Gambia and Sierra Leone not to mention her friendly Francophone countries and has always emerged one Africa’s major donor partners in the world.
The development packages normally dished out to Africa year in and out by the government of the People’s Republic of China through its Exim Bank worth billions on United States Dollars to a point of outweighing traditional UKAID, IMF and World Bank donor communities pittances that are given to developing African nations with tight string attached, which does not in any encourage Sub-Sahara African countries with no exemption of Sierra Leone to develop at all.
In fact to say the least, China offer multiple chances of national developmental programmes ranging from trade, commerce, direct foreign investment, foreign relations and bilateral cooperation, cultural exchanges, infrastructural development, knowledge transfers through education via scholarships, health and medicines, security sector reforms, agriculture and above all aid in the forms of soft loans in cash to African countries for their growth and developmental programmes without conditions, mostly at the angers of international conspiracy leaders – Britain and the United States which prompt series of untimely and unwarranted regime change in Africa.
And these changes of power probably to the wrong hands in Nigeria, The Gambia and Sierra Leone have always landed citizens of those countries at regret shores of socio-economic hardship that led to the massive suffering of vulnerable population of those poor recipient nations.
That is why these two western powers always frown at countries that are directly dealing with China and other South East Asian countries for fear of dominance against their interest as was done in Sierra Leone in 2018 and for a so-called democratic in The Gambia, which has in less than three years become sour at the regret of Gambians, Sierra Leoneans and Liberians at home and abroad.
The more reasons they prefer stiffer conditionality on UKAID IMF and the World Bank string attached pittance loans to African countries as well as other developing economies through regulatory supervisions, and controls in the name of unfavourable circumstances that are mostly not helping the economic performances that are slowing down the pace of economic growth and development of such recipient countries.
These conditions always come at the disadvantages of weaker countries like ours but the donor communities pretends as if they are always making fair interventions in the best interests of the developing nations whereas their policies end up affecting poorer countries and their people with the infliction of poverty backed by imposing human sufferings as Sierra Leoneans, Liberians and Gambians are presently faced with missing past glories of former socioeconomic development in favour of empty poverty with fake democracy. Whereas support from elsewhere in South East Asia and China in particular, have come a long ways in salvaging under development and economic situations in developing economies and countries with lesser financial capacities to withstand deceptive western UKAID, IMF and World Bank donor policies and conditionalities that always left the masses in abject poverty
