ThinkTank

By Umaru Fofana 

It’s almost exactly six months to the day when Sierra Leone returns to the polls. 24 June 2023 will be the sixth time, since the end of the war in January 2002, when Sierra Leoneans will be holding a general election – four of them presidential and legislative (2002, 2007, 2012 and 2018) and two local council polls held separately in 2004 and 2008.

By Umaru Fofana

Like presidential pardons, Presidential Awards the world over are almost always characterised – marred if you prefer – by controversy. There is bound to be criticism over who got honoured or who did not. Hardly does any awardee please everyone.

By Umaru Fofana

Sierra Leone has a new health minister. There can hardly be anyone better qualified than Dr Austin Demby to handle the country’s health sector especially at this time.

The renowned US-based epidemiologist and virologist spent decades working in disease prevention and control around the world for the Health Resources and Services Administration, a sister agency for the US Center for Disease Control.

By Umaru Fofana

2020 has been an eventful year for the world in which bitter politics and the coronavirus have brought about a toxic mix. It has been so in advance democracies as much as it has been in developing countries such as Sierra Leone.

By Umaru Fofana

Sierra Leone is a country full of contradictions and hypocrisy. We profess to love dogs but we are despicably cruel to man’s best friend. We leave them out in the rain and feed them on the dirty sandy floor. We let them go for months without bathing them.

We say women are our mothers and chatter all day about how we love them or how they make us happy. Yet we treat them disrespectfully and even scornfully. We even dehumanize them and subjugate them to the backburner at home and in decision-making in public.

By Umaru Fofana
The date was 31 March 2020. A Sierra Leonean businessman – in his mid-30s – who had flown in from France – tested positive for the coronavirus in Freetown. The country became the last in West Africa and one of the last five – or so – on the entire continent to fall to the raging virus.

By Umaru Fofana

As the world begins to come to terms with living with the coronavirus pandemic and reopening itself, albeit gradually, it is probably time to take some stock.

Three things that flourished during this tamed new normal life we have been living in the last three months or so are food, medical supplies, and technology – Including, of course, entertainment.