By Hassan I. Conteh

Africa24 news

It’s like a ghost scene at Ferry junction east of Freetown. This place used to be a booming market square with all sorts of provincial farm goods being sold here.

But now the crowds of people are over; the market goods are scarce too.

The market is empty with lorries.

Only a few baskets of tomatoes from some trucks could be seen. A man was pushing away a cartwheel loaded with some tomatoes baskets on a Wednesday this year’s Christmas festive.

And the mangoes are not in plentiful supply here at Peace market.

In the past twelve or fifteen years, this market used to be filled with ripe mangoes in baskets sold by traders from Kabala town.

But now even when the period of mangoes harvest in June-July comes, just only few ripe and raw mangoes could be seen in plentiful supply in markets in Freetown and across the country.

Peace market was and is still getting its upcountry farm goods from Kabala in Koinadugu district, north of Sierra Leone. Lots of traders used to come and buy business there.

But now market activity there is on a small scale. It doesn’t thrive again with perishable and non-perishable crops.

By 2003-07, there used to be many petty traders of local vegetables and crops coming in drone-numbers to buy pepper, onions, okaras, lemon fruits and lime fruits in bags and sometimes in full baskets.

Traders from Guard Street or what is also called Dove Cot market would often team up in numbers to purchase baskets and bags of onions, okaras, plum seeds, maize crops daily.

Cartwheel labourers such as omolankay riders, wilbarrow pushers were deploying farm goods bought by traders of Dove Cot in the past few years.

Traders from Pujehun, Kailahun districts from the south had been coming with plantains, yams, beans, bananas, pea fruits in Guard Street over the years.

But now the number of these traders has declined as compared to twelve years ago.

It was common to see able-bodied men carrying baskets full of local ‘nenekoro’ pepper and English pepper to be sold by traders in Guard Street.

But now neither Guard Street nor Peace market is having farm goods flowing in these markets in the capital.

Many traders, whom we spoken to, told us that they had stopped coming to Peace market because vegetables are not being brought there again like the past fifteen years.

“You can see how the market is; it is very empty. Not all drivers from Kabala come to Peace market these days,” says a man who’s tasked to unload vegetable goods from some trucks in baskets and sacks.

“Sometimes, it takes a whole week without seeing a truck entering the market.

Many traders are no longer coming here again. It may be because of the too much hardship now.”

Like Peace market stories shared by sellers of vegetables and crops are the same revelations given by other sellers and traders almost everywhere in the country.

In Dove Cot, petty traders have been repeatedly been telling us, through exclusive interviews, that business and sales don’t flourish again owing to the dollar rise in the country and fuel high cost that is affecting transportation of these farm goods to the capital markets.

“In 2012, a bag of cassava was just around Le 12,000 and the transport fare was very minimal. But due to high transport charges by drivers a bag of cassava tubers which used to be sold just Le 12,000 years back was sold in 2020 to Le 200,000.

“Things have completely changed. And the crops don’t only rise in prices but also they are in short supply from where they are grown in the rural,” explains Abudlai, a cassava tubers seller in Guard Street, Freetown.

To other Sierra Leoneans, they blame not the fuel and dollar rise for the hardship but those who have abandoned the rural to live in the urban.

It seems unless and until Sierra Leoneans return to the farms in the rural to grow the crops, fruits and vegetables they eat daily and reserve the other to be sold in the markets.