Category: Resources

Freetown – tangible progress, by Mats Utas

May 24, 2019 /
  • Kushe-o (hello) – entering Eastern parts of Freetown in the late afternoon

New roads and through fares, broadened streets, less traffic congestion, paved streets, a toll road making the exit out of the city much easier.

Thousands and again thousands of new houses being constructed, literary littering the hills around Freetown, and strewn out around stretches of road where their used to be forest and scrub.

The sound of generators, that once was a fundamental rhythm of the street, has silenced. During one of the few blackouts we drove through dark streets and I asked a longtime friend of why there were no lights in the windows. He simply stated that people had gotten used to the presence of electricity so they no longer maintain their generators. They tossed away their embarrassing Kabbah Tigers – a 100 USD generator named after the president at the time. Darkness still overcomes Freetown once in a while, but most nights when I am here the city is dressed in light.

It has been ten years since I last visited Sierra Leone

The first morning after my arrival it is cleaning Saturday. People clean their backyards but also public areas. Cars are not allowed to ply the streets up until noon. Smoke and the smell of burnt plastic dominate airspace. I enjoy the sounds of Wilberforce village an older part of the city that has received a good brush-up and now appear rather middle-class. A radio is playing E get Cro Cro a tune by Sierra Leonean musicians Manzu avec C-Bolt popular in 2004-05. Cro-cro in Krio (as well as in Nigerian pigeon) means rashes and although the song is mainly a cautionary tale over deceases a prostitute has, cro-cro was back in my days most often mentioned in relation to how filthy the city was. Cro-Cro, just as cholera, typhoid fever and the likes, is an outcome of a filthy city. Yet with a variety of cleaning efforts Freetown is much cleaner today. By stating that I am not saying that all is good. But, just as with the availability of power and the paving of streets, it has improved greatly over the past ten years.

  • A combination of harmattan dust and smoke from garbage fires after the cleaning Saturday

Between 2004 and 2006 I did a two year long fieldwork centering a street corner in downtown Freetown. It was a quite messy area both socially and infra-structurally. Many of the guys I worked with were former combatants struggling to make do in the post-war realm. The more legal part of the income they made came from washing cars. The street corner was unpaved and in the dry season within minutes red dust covered newly washed cars. In the rainy season roads turned to muddy stretches and gutters were overflowing. Today the street corner is paved. Many of the guys from my fieldwork still hang-out on the corner, but to a much lesser extent. They are no longer dependent on the infrequent and ill-paying carwash business, but have jobs elsewhere in the city. They no longer live rough in the streets. Thus looking in the back mirror they were not as stuck as they themselves felt at the time. Life to most is still not easy, wealth is not available in abundance, but it is important to point out that they have maneuvered out of the hazy social death they at the time believed they would remain in.

Back in 2004-06 our discussions were dominated by topics centering the civil war, but also an equally violent aftermath. We talked about death, about drugs, about crime and about bare survival. Today we talk about children and we talk about relations. I want to repeat that life is still not easy for a majority of these guys. And quite a few are no longer with us having at a far too early age passed away – most recently Ebola took its toll. Yet still there has been progress. And in their faces it is hard to see that ten years has past. Their facial expressions signals newfound dignity and quite a bit of health. Rounder faces, clearer eyes. They made it this far.

  • Proud father and son

Freetown is far from problem-less. The growth of the city is creating new emergencies. The shaving of the lush green hills surrounding Freetown is not just making the city look less attractive, but it destroys delicate eco-systems, creating ample space for catastrophes like a mudslide in August 2017, killing around 400 persons. Freetown has grown from a city of 130.000 in 1963 to over a million today. Despite good efforts has been placed on widening the road networks it is hardly enough. There is abundant need for a public bus system, and if being more ambitious a tram line. More serious the water and sewage systems are severely under-dimensioned and the lack of water might well turn into a serious emergency in a not so distant future. As I stated above electricity is much more reliant today, but how sustainable it is can be questioned. There is currently a big ship producing much of the power for the city on roadstead outside the city. It is reliant on oil – not very sustainable – but more seriously, on the short term, it could sail off with the blink of an eye if the government fails to pay for it. Close by where the ship is anchored, there is the slum of Kroo bay where people continue to live in pan-bodies, shacks, and where many people balance on the edge between life and death on a daily basis. When I was in Freetown a fire ravaged the community and it is alleged that several hundred houses were burnt down.

  • Kroo bay with the electricity providing ship in the background

Socio-economically Freetown is still crumbling under a corrupt bureaucracy and with an insufficient taxation system that does not render a sustainable national economy. Little is indicating that improvements on this front are enough. The new president’s paopa (force in Krio) ways may make some more apprehensive, but it is difficult to believe that people within the vicinity of the president will not maintain impunity. I hope I will be proved wrong. There is however also a risk that paopa and the new ideal of a soldier team (written on mini-busses and an expressed idiom by local gangs) will once again turn the Sierra Leone to a more authoritarian country – and again let’s hope I am wrong.

I keep returning to roads. I believe in order to improve the Sierra Leonean economy it is pivotal that road transport from the countryside is good. If roads are in a bad state agricultural products ends being spoilt during transport thus driving up prices. But also the transportation itself will be expensive as bad roads demands high maintenance and repair costs on vehicles. With regards to infrastructural problems East-Central Freetown is still a bottleneck, but once leaving this behind the eastern part of the city has now a road of free flow all the way to Waterloo. Although some Freetonians are worried by the fact that the Chinese are making profit because of a road toll, even the toll gates are seen as a proof of progress by most. And one driver told me that except for the toll gates, there are virtually no police checkpoints taking your money:

you can go all the way upline with only a 2000 Leones (20 cent) bribe 

  • The Chinese tool gate

That’s development. Still local rice sold in Freetown is more expensive than the imported one. That’s sad.

Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world. Many people can hardly afford to put food on their table. Most do not have the resources to plan ahead. However that said Freetown is still a city of smiles and amicable social wealth. Much more smiling than my home country Sweden. That’s a conundrum. It is a country of “shuffering and shmiling” to quote great Nigerian singer Fela Kuti.

  • Freetown hub of innovation?

Postlude

First time I visited the country was in 1992. The next time was during the war in 1998. I lived in Sierra Leone for two years between 2004 and 2006. Between 2006 and 2009 I on average visited the country twice a year. After a ten years long break I returned during the spring of 2019. The worst condition I have seen Sierra Leone in was actually in 1992 weeks prior to the military coup that brought Valentine Strasser and NPRC to power. It was at the very beginning of a civil war that took off because of a direly mismanaged state. Although the war caused devastating destruction and human suffering, international attention drew more resources to the country and already a year after wars end conditions in the capital Freetown, but also in much of the “upline” provinces, was arguably better than before. The Ebola epidemic (2014-2015) was the next set-back, but it appears that at least Freetown has recovered well. Indeed lots of people passed away and it devastated families, but although I have no date to prove it I wonder if the resources which the international community provided is now in parts spent in the ongoing construction boom?

Beyond African ’growth’: some comments on the Swedish media debate, by Linda Engström

November 4, 2013 /

On Saturday the 26th October, the Swedish National Radio broadcasts its traditional 20 minutes of economy news – ‘Ekonomiekot’. The reporter and editor Pär Ivarsson interviews national economist Peter Stein, and Stefan Kullander, Sales manager for Africa at the company ABB in Sweden. The topic of today’s program is the economic growth of Africa.

There are many things that strike me, listening to this program. Below, I have listed my four main points of critique that I hope could contribute to that ‘Ekonomiekot’ partly revises its take on economic growth, development and ‘Africa’.

First of all, the recent and frequent reports on outstanding economic growth in Africa have quickly turned this into mainstream ‘knowledge’. But, earlier this year, the Norwegian scholar Morten Jerven published his book ‘Poor Numbers – How we are misled about African development statistics and what to do about it’. Looking carefully at what is behind these numbers he concludes that “the quantitative basis for knowledge about African economic development is very fragile”. In Ekonomiekot, for example, Ghana is pinpointed as one of the more successful countries regarding economic growth. According to Jerven, Ghana’s increase in GDP depend to a large extent to use of better data and better methods for accounting.  Tanzania is also mentioned, which is the country where I myself conduct field work. Certainly, there has been progress in some regions of Tanzania. However, the contrasts between a rich elite and a poor peasantry is striking, especially if you spend time in rural areas. According to some experts – inequality is only increasing.

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Fair investments? Swedish Governmental funds, land grabbing and human rights in Sierra Leone, by Tilde Berggren

May 23, 2013 /

According to a number of local and international NGO’s, journalists and researchers monitoring the situation on the ground, the large scale investment in Sierra Leone between Addax Onyx Group (AOG) and Swedfund, as well as a range of additional investors, is causing concern. The main concern is that the investment is contributing to poverty, decreased access to basic rights and may increase instability and anger amongst the local population. Swedfund is dismissing the concerns, arguing that the monitoring of the situation is sufficient and emphasizes that the project is in its start-up phase and it is therefore too early to measure impact. However, those monitoring the situation are many and conclusions based on their monitoring are coherent and consistent and can therefore not be dismissed.

Swedfund is defined as a bilateral Development Finance Institution, it is a development finance institution owned by the Swedish State. In 2011 Swedfund signed an agreement to become equity partner with Addax Onyx Group (AOG), committing EUR 10 million to an investment in Sierra Leone. Sweden contributed to create the largest private sector agriculture investment in Sierra Leone ever made. The purpose: to grow sugarcane and produce ethanol for the European market. The Swedish Government and Swedfund claims to be committed to comply with principles for businesses and human rights and to ensure that investments and aid contributes to ensure respect for human rights.

It is more a rule than an exception that  negative impacts on the lives of ordinary people of large scale investments are ignored. In the majority of cases it is those that have  access to information and the financial capital that are taking the lead in exploitation of natural resources while working for governments and multi-national corporations.

It is not unusual that businesses invest in conflicts and post-conflict affected areas where no or few accountability mechanisms exist and where corruption is the norm. To meet the rising demand for accountability of corporations, principles have been developed by international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. The idea to ensure that the corporations be held responsible to some kind of reasonable standards in their pursuit of financial capital is good.

Because of the complicated nature of domestic and international law and the way it relate to multi-national corporations, an alternative to strict legal accountability has taken shape in non-binding international standards. These principles are non-enforceable and may in some cases rather hamper accountability and access to justice in countries without proper accountability mechanisms than helping to support them. Investment agreements may pave the way for abuse and violations of human rights provide huge financial gains for international investors and a select few of national political and economic elite.

It is the State that has the responsibility to protect its population against human rights abuses by third parties, such as corporations. It is important to distinguish the responsibility of States and corporations. States ratify legally binding conventions, meaning that they have a legal responsibility to respect and protect human rights. Corporations are merely legally bound by the agreement they have entered, be it with a state, another corporation or an individual. Corporations are bound by the domestic laws governing the state where they establish their business. Even if corporations are bound to “respect” human rights, as established in non-binding UN Human Rights Council and General Assembly resolutions, this is not, to date, a legal responsibility under international law, rather a moral and ethical responsibility.

A State does not violate its human rights obligations if proper accountability mechanisms, such as laws, policies and procedures for investigations, prosecution in a court of law and effective legal remedies, are implemented and enforced. In cases of human rights abuses committed by corporations, it is the responsibility of the State to prevent, punish and compensate when abuses occur, corporations are not attributed such authority.

It is not unusual that long term agreements are entered into between States and multi-national corporations. A corporation may declare in an agreement and in its general corporate social responsibility strategy that it intend to apply international non-binding standards such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. A corporation may apply the processes established in these international principles and follow the standards in detail. Yet, the agreement between a State and a corporation may have severe impact on the human rights and lives of large numbers of people unless domestic standards and mechanisms exists to hold corporations responsible for abuse..

When corporations lease large areas of land, people that remain on the land can in the best-case scenario agree to limited or no possibility to continue using their land for income and food generating purposes. They might stay on the land without being able to use it or they might leave. They might also be offered to start working for a corporation if such possibilities arise. This often happens under unpredictable and dire working conditions and lack of alternatives to income makes it hard to opt out.

Take the example of the above mentioned private investment in Sierra Leone between Addax Bioenergy and the Government of Sierra Leone. Addax have leased 44 000 hectares of land, equivalent to 26 000 soccer fields from the Government of Sierra Leone. The land lease agreement is valid for a period of 50 years. 92 villages exist on the leased area, which is inhabited by approximately 14 000 people. Around 2000 work opportunities is estimated to have been created the past four years for these 14 000, 4000 were promised so far.  The people living on the land are paid an average of 8 dollars per 1 hectare and family a year.

The overall lease agreement is entered into between Addax and local Chiefdom Councils. The lease sets out how, amongst other issues, the rent of the lease will be distributed between the central government, the chiefdom council, the local district council and amongst ”those adults treated as land owners”, (which means those people inhabiting the leased land). These adults are not legal land owners of the land; since they according to the laws governing Sierra Leone cannot own land. The Chiefdom Council agrees, in the lease, to “use their best endeavors” to ensure that the lease is signed.

The local land owners were also given a document called an ”acknowledgement agreement” in which they by receipt of an annual payment of 1.40 USD per acre of land, to be shared amongst family, acknowledged the validity of the lease agreement between the local authorities and the corporation.

In return the “landowner” agreed not to interfere with the company’s rights under the lease and they acknowledge the company’s rights to use their plot of land. The signing by the “landowner” on behalf of his family consolidates the free, prior and informed consent process, according to the corporation. The lease gives the corporation exclusive possession over villages, rivers, forests etc. that forms a part of the leased land.

If any conflicts arise on the lease they shall be resolved by arbitration in London, hence not by the national judicial system of Sierra Leone. Knowing the costs involved in arbitration, the chances that any local authorities, would contest any clause in the lease by arbitration in London, are extremely slim. If, however, the parties resort to arbitration, the right to appeal is waived by the lease agreement.

Keeping the above in mind, the process establishing the above lease and “acknowledgement agreement” has beencarried out in accordance with established principles by the United Nations on business and human rights and IFC standards. A large number of information sessions were held with the inhabitants of the land and the corporation. Several evaluations and assessments were made by the corporation. The corporation feels proud to inform that now, contrary to before, the land owners have a paper showing their registered plot of land. Note however the land owners are not the “owners” they are just called “owners”.

It must be stressed that the majority of the inhabitants in the staked out area have very low, if any education, and often they have not travelled further than to the district town Makeni. The majority of the people in the area live beneath the poverty line. This means that they barely have food for the day. When signing, or putting their thumbprint on the acknowledgement agreement, they could not grasp the large scale implications. The agreement was already established by their own local authorities. They received less than two dollars a year per acre for land they had farmed and resided on for generations.To them, giving up access to their cassava plantations and the use of a plot of land in exchange for the promises of a large scale investment most likely came with the idea of progress towards a better life. In their world, when the notion of jobs, roads, income, food, education and health arise, it is not difficult to sign such a document. However, they also knew that they did not have a choice, on their behalf, the local authorities had already leased the land and, as noted in the lease agreement ”used their best endeavors to ensure that the lease would be signed” and that the corporation be ensured to ”peacefully and quietly” enjoy the land without any interruption.

It is argued that benefits will come with the investment, but despite these, what the land lease agreement between the Government of Sierra Leone and Addax really implies is that 14 000 people no longer have rights to use the land, freely access areas to hunt and in some cases access clean water. They do however have access to rice. The corporation has established rice plantations. There are growing concerns by local NGOs that rice does not sufficiently ensure the nutrition needs of the inhabitants.

Hesitation to sign the acknowledgement agreement might have arisen if the inhabitants of the land had equal access to information and knowledge as the corporation and the Sierra Leonean Government. But for a person living far away from international business know-how it is virtually impossible to strategically understand the financial and long term implications of the agreement.

Perhaps they would have thought twice, questioned or demanded conditions had they had equal access to information. This is where the Government of Sierra Leone should have stepped in, to ensure that the human rights of the inhabitants of the land were protected. But the Government  did not. The Government was the party that signed the lease agreement. The basic livelihood of 14 000 citizens was with a signature replaced with uncertain futures, as temporary laborers, at the whims of a large-scale investor with limited socio-economic concerns for the population. Surprisingly those working for the company and investors, such as the Swedish Government appear to have a very hard time understanding why the inhabitants now complain about the establishment of the corporation.

Without doubt the people did not have access to information about the overall consequences of the agreement. They did not know the implications of the clauses stipulating that Addax Bioenergy do not need pay corporation tax until 2022 and is exempted from paying duty on a number of goods and the overall implication of this on Sierra Leone. What if they knew that international firms shift profits to lower tax jurisdictions cost Africa $38bn (£25bn) a year? According to the Africa progress report 2013, by the Africa Progress Panel chaired by Kofi Annan, Africa lose through such tax loopholes, twice as much as the total gains from all donor funds. Perhaps there would have been hesitation in signing? Had it been that Sierra Leone was a country where abuse of power was not common, had Sierra Leone not been governed by a system of complex local and central power structures, in which high levels of corruption exist, had they known that research indicates that prospects of a better life increase only for those already having a good life when these kind of investments are made, perhaps they would not have signed any agreement.

Perhaps the inhabitants would have questioned the consequences for their country, for themselves and for the coming two generations. Perhaps they would have demanded that any conflicts between Addax and the Government of the lease agreement be settled in a local court where they could access justice, instead of in a court of arbitration in London. What will happen when the illusions of newfound prosperity fades and the 14 000 people start requesting for the indications of a better life they had when they signed the agreement?

Anger against corrupt local leaders was part of fuelling the conflict in Sierra Leone. Thus, feelings like those existing before the war may again arise. Increased malnutrition, lack of water and food may create cleavages between local communities and ethnic groups. Signs of anger and protests against the corporation have already occurred. People are starting to question the agreements they signed. . The corporation, the investors, the Sierra Leone government are justifying the situation by referring to compliance with international principles established for human rights and business. Addax Bioenergy followed many existing principles of corporate social responsibility. However, fairness and equality in access to knowledge and information did not exist. If the Government of Sierra Leone does not represent the people then investing countries like Sweden must step in and take responsibility. It is not justifiable to support investments in a country when accountability systems are not in place, corruption is known to be rampant and human rights violations are not tackled by the state.

The Africa Progress report 2013 released 10 May, indicates that the establishment of corporations may improve the overall financial situation of a country, but not the situation of the poor; instead they rather tend to increase the gap between poor and rich.

According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, countries with weak land governance increases the risk of large-scale land deals turning in to actual “land grabs” where free, prior and informed consent of affected communities is not sought and human rights violations often occur.

Evidence shows that few jobs are created by biofuel-related investments relative to other sectors and where small-scale farming is replaced by large-scale and heavily-mechanized monocultures. Many of the former land users’ end up jobless and landless according to the Special Rapporteur.

The case of Sierra Leone, supported by the Swedish Government’s aid scheme and implemented by Addax bioenergy is justified by compliance with the processes stipulated in the principles for business and human rights.. What is not noted by the Swedish Government, the Government of Sierra Leone and Addax is that compliance with international standards for businesses and enterprises, does not exclude responsibility for human rights. States must comply with legally binding human rights law. There should be a scrutiny of the ways corporations and donor countries use the principles of human rights. States with natural resources must be held accountable for allowing investments, prone to result in human rights abuses, establish when legal conditions and accountability mechanisms does not exist. Corporations and donors must take moral and ethical responsibility. Responsibility cannot be avoided by hiding behind processes established in principles of business and human rights.

Tilde Berggren is a human rights lawyer having worked the past eight years with policy development at the United Nations headquarters in New York, including with the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Special Advisor on Gender Issues, with human rights monitoring and reporting in the UN Mission in Sierra Leone and with Civil Rights Defenders in Kosovo and Macedonia.

According to a number of local and international NGO’s, journalists and researchers monitoring the situation on the ground, the large scale investment in Sierra Leone between Addax Onyx Group (AOG) and Swedfund, as well as a range of additional investors, is causing concern. The main concern is that the investment is contributing to poverty, decreased access to basic rights and may increase instability and anger amongst the local population. Swedfund is consistently dismissing the concerns, arguing that the monitoring of the situation is not sufficient and not carried out in detail, hence not trustworthy and does not illustrate the overall situation. Swedfund on their side emphasize that the project is in its start-up phase and therefore it is therefore too early to measure impact. However, those monitoring the situation are many and conclusions based on their monitoring are coherent and consistent and can therefore not be dismissed.

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