By Saio Marrah
The British High Commissioner to Sierra Leone, Lisa Jane Chesney, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a British-led International Investment Fund, Africa Resilience Investment Accelerator (ARIA) that is to support Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the country.
The event at the residence of the British High Commissioner, on Thursday 2nd November, 2023 attracted entrepreneurs in Sierra Leone and senior Government officials including the Chief Minister, Dr David Moinina Sengeh.
Ms. Chesney told the gathering that the partnership between the British High Commission and ARIA is to support and unlock more investments in Sierra Leone.
She spoke about the joint objectives such a partnership can help both parties achieve and highlighted the need for impactful investment especially by development financing institutions in Sierra Leone, with due consideration to strengthening the ecosystem in Sierra Leone.
Ms. Chesney noted that the partnership is all about producing effective investments and learning in a broader effort way to increase donor Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) collaboration.
The British International Investment Co-Lead of the ARIA initiative, Alex Kucharski described the MOU as a pioneering partnership at a global level and that DFI donors need to work together as being demonstrated here in Sierra Leone.
He said ARIA is made up of 16 DFIs set up to invest in frontier markets. He said they need to identify investment challenges and try to solve them.
He said ARIA is committed to bringing more investment into Sierra Leone.
Kucharski noted that even though there are challenges, there are also many opportunities in terms of investment in Sierra Leone.
He said they will look into agriculture, which is a main priority of the government, and explore many other sectors including infrastructure development in Sierra Leone.
During a panel discussion, it was revealed that ARIA has an asset of 200 Billion United States Dollars in total and that there is already one Billion United States Dollars committed to supporting businesses in Sierra Leone.
The Chief Executive Officer of Freetown Waste Transformers, Aminata Dumbuya-Jarr spoke of the unique opportunities relating to innovation and digitalization in urban services, which she said they need to take advantage of. She however stated that they face a lack of support.
Another panelist, Dr. Claudius Hebert-Williams, talked about investing in renewable energy in view of the fact that most people cannot afford to fund the initial capital cost.
He also mentioned how most of the SMEs in Sierra Leone have been encountering problems with collateral and currency fluctuation.
ARIA is an initiative bringing together 16 Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), initially funded by British International Investment and other partners.
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