Sierra Leone’s Wasted Ballot
By Umaru Fofana On the edges of Freetown is the beauty of the Atlantic Ocean – gold and white sandy beaches compete and empty themselves into the blue of the sea. But on the edges of that ocean and...
View ArticleIn love with Sierra Leone Ebola warriors
By Umaru Fofana For the third time I visited Mariatu Kargbo this week at her Old Wharf residence at Wellington in the eastern Freetown suburb. She is a female member of one of the Ebola burial teams...
View ArticleSierra Leone’s opposition with no position
By Umaru Fofana Sierra Leone is in the doldrums, especially politically speaking. And this is ineluctably having a reverberating effect on the overall impact of the country. The country is led by an...
View ArticleIf only journalists could be journalists in Sierra Leone
By Umaru Fofana If you are an editor of a newspaper or in a radio or TV newsroom in Sierra Leone I wonder how long ago it was that a journalist called requesting you to assign a reporter to cover an...
View ArticleSierra Leone in a diplomatic snub of Nigeria and Ghana?
By Umaru Fofana Nigeria is the power engine and big brother in Africa in more ways than one and has pumped more money into Sierra Leone – both as aid and as investment – than any other country has done...
View ArticleRIP Lans Fofie; We are coming
By Umaru Fofana For many years – not least during the country’s civil war in the 1990s – he was the dominant voice of the BBC in Sierra Leone. So much so that when I started working for the World...
View ArticlePawns in Sierra Leone’s pitiful political plot
By Umaru Fofana It seems EXPULSION is the new political lingo in town. As if the controversy surrounding the sacking of the elected Vice President is not suffocating the country enough, the opposition...
View ArticleEven Cinderella was better off than Sierra Leone Ebola orphans
By Umaru Fofana There once lived an unhappy young girl whose mother had died. Her father married a widow who had had two daughters with another man. The stepmom hated her guts. And the story goes on...
View ArticleAbuse of Ebola burial powers in Sierra Leone
By Umaru Fofana First of all I owe you an apology for the long hiatus without writing. It has been a very busy few months for me. In the last one month, for example, I have been travelling the length...
View ArticleWhy Sierra Leone lost the AfDB presidency
By Umaru Fofana On the 1 September 2015 Africa’s premier financial institution will have a new man at the helm. 55-year-old Akinwumi Adesina will assume office after his election in May. It is a tall...
View ArticleSierra Leone’s image and post-Ebola recovery
By Umaru Fofana Late June 2015. I travelled to Kailahun as part of a documentary film I was making for NHK – Japan’s public broadcaster. It took me to the length and breadth of the district, a place...
View ArticleKKY may determine next president
By Umaru Fofana In November 2009 at the Westminster hall in London I was covering the Sierra Leone development partners’ conference. A very good initiative of the Sierra Leone and British governments...
View ArticleReforming Quranic Education in Sierra Leone
By Umaru Fofana Before your mind goes on an overdrive please note that this piece is not about radical Muslim preaching or preachers in Sierra Leone. Nor is it about an attempt by these preachers to...
View ArticleSierra Leone: Decaying schools, declining growth!
By Umaru Fofana Staff morale is at a very low ebb as teachers and pupils compete to see who plays truant more recklessly. There is hardly any effective monitoring of teachers. Classrooms are often...
View ArticleTelecoms companies’ internet ripoff in Sierra Leone
By Umaru Fofana Such is the way of the world these days that one wonders how we used to live our lives before the advent of the mobile phone – or for the sake of this piece, the internet. My friend and...
View ArticleAbortion, finding the middle ground
By Umaru Fofana Chances are that since the abortion debate got heated in Sierra Leone in January scores – perhaps hundreds – of women and girls have terminated their pregnancies. Many of them could...
View ArticleSierra Leone’s missing Ebola awards!
By Umaru Fofana Any keen observer might be tempted into thinking that by the headline I am bothered by a strange decision of President Ernest Bai Koroma and his government. For some reason the...
View ArticleBudget cuts, the Liberia model for Sierra Leone
By Umaru Fofana Forget about all the plans to build health care facilities, expand on the Medical Corps and set up a US-style centre for disease control as a way of responding to the awakening brought...
View ArticleGoing mental in Sierra Leone
By Umaru Fofana Sorie, not his real name, lies on a hospital bed. A bed and bedding not great, but one whose comfort or greatness no one lying on it cares a hoot about. Their wellness – or the lack of...
View ArticleSierra Leone, where and when poverty is criminal and fatal
By Umaru Fofana It is 05:45 am. Very early in the morning by any standards. In some countries this is when the food chain starts to move for the day. Bakeries that supply kids with bread throw their...
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