Feature

By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay

It’s 8:30am on a Friday morning and people were streaming to Tower Hill.

By the time some of us could get there, there was already a dancing party waiting to welcome us, at the House of Parliament.

Supporters of the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) and loyalists of the Finance Minister, Jacob Jusu Saffa (JJ Saffa) were dressed in green T-shirts with inscriptions like: ‘We support JJ Saffa’ and ‘We stand with JJ Saffa – FY 2020 Budget’.

By Joe Pemagbi

Democracy is about giving everybody a chance to be heard in the way the affairs of a country are run, not only in the transition of power. This means, citizens are not just voting machines brought out at election time.

Democracy is preferred to other forms of governance for several reasons, but principally because it is supposed to provide space for the articulation of ideas and ensure a fertile ground for a multiplicity of public policies in an environment characterized by regular transfer and change of political power.

By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay

At the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization conference in Freetown in July, two signposts, standing side by side, read: “Di real 4G” and “D only 4G.”

Those signposts by Africell and Orange illustrated an interesting side of the competition in Sierra Leone’s telecoms industry.

This week we reported on an even more practical rivalry between Africell and latest entrant, QCell. The story highlighted how the rivalry between the two have affected their subscribers.

Augusta M. Nuwomah is founder and head of the only civil society organization focusing on gender issues in the mining communities of Rutile - Women’s Initiative Forum for Empowerment in Extractive (WIFEE).

In this interview with Kemo Cham and Mohamed Massaquoi, she talks about why she formed the organization and what it does and the major issues that justify the need for increased attention to the struggle of women in the mining communities.

Can you give us a brief background of this organization?

By Kemo Cham

Iye Gloria is among few parents in the village of Junttionla whose children enjoy the luxury of traveling to school by Okada (commercial motor bike), the most common form of transportation in this part of Sierra Leone.

By Kemo Cham

Frances Gassimu is desperately searching for justice. Her husband of over two decades suddenly decided to abandon her.

For the last 12 months, Frances has been taking care of their five children all by herself. Mohamed Gassimu only occasionally resurfaces to collect one or two household items which he allegedly takes to his new found love, with whom he has been staying.

By Kemo Cham

Chief Alfred Tuayami was a young man when his village of Gangama was relocated to make way for what is today home to one of Sierra Rutile’s two dredges.

This was in 1986, when dozens of families were uprooted from their ancestral lands with promises that they would be provided proper housing, schools, alongside social amenities like water and electricity in their new home. Thirty-two years later, what’s left of the relocated families is still waiting for the realization of those promises.