By Alusine Fullah

Lieutenant General (Rtd) Brima Sesay has informed journalists during the weekly press conference that the Directorate of Disaster Management Agency is fully ready disaster management in this country.  He said: “The Directorate is fully ready…to build and institutionalize a robust early warning and response system to effectively respond to disasters through reinforced governance and management architecture for national disaster related issues.”

NDMA-SL is an Agency established by an Act of Parliament to manage disasters and similar emergencies throughout Sierra Leone, to establish offices of the Agency throughout Sierra Leone, to establish the national, regional, district, and chiefdom disaster management committees, to establish a National Disaster Management Fund to provide finances for the prevention and management of disasters and similar emergencies throughout Sierra Leone and to provide for other related matters.

As a country, Sierra Leone is very reliant on ex post assistance for response and recovery. For instance, in the aftermath of the Ebola outbreak, over US$700 million was received in financial assistance from development and humanitarian partners. Whether in the aftermath of regular flood events or large flood and landslide events such as those in 2017, the country remains dependent on aid from international partners. But despite regular donor inflows for disaster response, Sierra Leone remains without a robust system for tracking the use of donor funds. Given this long-standing support from donors, the lack of well-developed systems for response, and the vast competing development challenges that must be managed with a fiscally constrained budget, Sierra Leone’s shift toward proactive financial planning will take time.