News

Six new Commissioners of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have taken up office in Abuja, Nigeria. They include Khady Ramatu Sacco of Sierra Leone who becomes the Commissioner of Administration and Finance. Mrs Sacco is the former Director of Finance and Budget at the Bank of Sierra Leone.
The new commissioners emerged following a recruitment exercise which has now been validated by the ECOWAS Council of Ministers at an extraordinary meeting, according to an ECOWAS press release.

A 2-week-long investigation into how unsuspecting mobile phone and internet users of Airtel have been swindled of their credits has revealed that the mobile phone company was aware of the practice but did nothing to stop it.
On 30 January, 2012 Politico took up the issue of deliberately deducting units from phones and internet modems for no service rendered with the company’s Rawdon Street Office in central Freetown and found out from its sales and customer care units that they were aware of the act but “it was a technology related misnomer.”

By Tanu Jalloh
1 February 2012

Key Note Address by His Excellency the President
Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma
Sierra Leone Conference on Development and Transformation

The journey of the next fifty years of independence has begun; and we are gathered here today to map out how we are going to make it better than the journey we made during the last fifty years. This Conference is a moment for solidifying our collective promise to make this country better than we inherited it; and to deliver a country to our grandchildren that is worthy of their admiration, respect, and honorable remembrance of us.

By Umaru Fofana

By Tanu Jalloh

When the diamond mines surfaced in the 1930s the country glittered. The economy boomed. But when they almost diminished after eight decades, they left behind misery, hatred, greed and war. The hopes they had raised were razed. However, resources generated by the mines, then, were the major forces behind the country’s glosses. With the mines, there were hopes, but also was money.