By Hassan I. Conteh

Sierra Leone’s government under the leadership of President Julius Maada Bio has unveiled its flagship project, Feed Salone, just a week ago.

The event happened in south district, Pujehun, of Sierra Leone.

The Feed Salone (feeding the country, Sierra Leone) is President Bio’s SLPP’s dream-come true project which is aimed to boosting food productivity in the country through several implementation of agriculture and farming activities.

The flagship project forms part of Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP)’s five-year term agenda called Big Five Game Changers: Accelerating Economic Growth and Building Resilience.

SLPP’s Big Five are five developmental themes for which ‘Feed Salone’ is captured as the top-most priority in their 2023 People’s Manifesto.

Bio’s administration after governing the country five years since 2018, is now committed in its second term in governance to providing food for Sierra Leoneans.

This initiative, to prioritize food availiability in the country, came as a result of Sierra Leoneans’ too much cries of hunger and hardship over the past five years of SLPP-led government.

A lot of Sierra Leoneans have been buying local foodstuffs in the country at very exorbitant costs.

The year 2023 has also been a tough one for poor Sierra Leoneans. President Bio has just begun his second five year term after controversially winning June 24 presidential elections.

Foodstuffs are pretty expensive for average Sierra Leoneans to afford in the past and up to date.

A bag of rice is costing an average Sierra Leone at least Le 800,000 (Eight Hundred Thousand Leones).

Since Sierra Leone still imports its basic foodstuffs with rice attracting billions of dollars on importation, the country is spending about USD 400m on regular basis on importation.

But, Bio’s government had thought it a wise decision that it is better to grow food for its people home than to import and spend huge billions of dollars on rice alone.

So, SLPP campaign on the ticket that they would be addressing the expensive food growing concerns in the country under their regime; hence its 2023 People’s Manifesto takes food a most pressing issue.

On October 16, 2023 in Pujehun, SLPP Feed Salone flagship project was launched.

And it followed a request made by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security to be given a bail out of some $250m to enable Feed Salone project be implemented.

Minister Dr. Henry Musa Kpaka of Agriculture and Food Security said they are closely chasing to meet a target of $350m to be fully able to speed up Feed Salone project in the country.

Dr. Kpaka told development partners and Sierra Leoneans that they would be enlisting about 72,000 registered farmers of Sierra Leone.

These farmers should have registered with Sierra Leone’s National Farmers’ Association.

Most Sierra Leoneans, however; are concerned about how finances in the form of incentives could be equally distributed among farmers in Sierra Leone.

When asked his opinion on government’s assistance in helping them to grow crops on farms, a farmer in the rural area of Waterloo said:

“We are not considered these days [2002- 2007] in terms of financial help and agricultural implements like in those days of former President Ahmad Tejan Kabba; sometimes you get to see people coming to you who don’t have any business in agriculture and farming but they meet you to allow them to use your own small farm in order for them to gain some advantage from foreign  donor partners or government agriculture ministry  in the disguise of undertaking  agriculture projects for which they never own a tiny farm,” explains, Joseph Kanu, an experienced farmer who had been in the trade for almost 30 years.

Like Joseph and many farmers in Sierra Leone, he believes that until and unless government of Sierra Leone takes agriculture as a reliable sector for employment for many people with huge financial supports being given to peasants farmers with more farming implements, food and fertilizers while youth labour farm workers are put on befitting monthly payroll, otherwise – any short of these initiatives – no project on boosting agriculture productivity in Sierra Leone will succeed.