Sierra Leone’s government has unveiled a Climate Resilience Energy Transition plan to unlock Africa’s tiny nation’s potentials to provide its citizens with reliable energy supply. But will that happen like a magic in the air? Or it is just a magic-spin by government – to persuade its citizens and party followers?

President Julius Maada Bio and other key world stakeholders World Bank representatives, UN Resident Coordinator, were at a two-day seminar to discuss ways to improve energy and food sufficiency and sustainability in Sierra Leone.

The seminar was geared towards proffering meaningful contributions for a just and inclusive transition plan for Sierra Leone.

The Ministry of Energy, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security, Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Development and Economic Planning, supported the successful launching of Climate Resilience Energy Transition programme in the country on October 23 and 24th 2023.

President Bio’s administration has shown commitments to re-afforesting most parts of Sierra Leone’s environments, in his first five-year term in office, notably the capital’s west peninsula hills, which have over the years, seen repeated falling of trees by some house builders.

Sierra Leone had suffered terrible floods and a recent mudslide on August 14, 2017 killed thousands of residents at Mortemeh Regent village, situated on Western peninsula in Freetown.

Sierra Leone, in the same year, 2017, was ranked as 3rd worst Africa country, which is exposed to the risk of climate change in the world after Bangladesh and Burkina Faso, according to an Africa Climate Change report.

And, although, Bio’s administration continues to show keen attention on the fight against climate change threats, Sierra Leone is still exposed to many environmental disasters caused by people and it faces climate change risks almost everywhere in the country.

For example, the government of Sierra Leone is still allowing hardwoods to be indiscriminately cut down by a sole government producer.

And, according to many critics, it seems Bio’s government is promoting calls to protect the country’s environment just to attract international donor support, but that truly, the government is not realistic in its campaign to protect the environment and to promote climate change fight in the country.

This is because the government seems to undermine the climate change fight as it is shipping abroad timbers in cubic containers and mercury is used by foreign mining companies, causing rivers to be polluted and destruction on the land goes unabated on mines sites.

On the promise to grow the country’s grid generation capacity from 200MW to 1GW in 10 years’ time and add 200 mini-grids to support energy access and agriculture, many informed Sierra Leoneans have said government wouldn’t want to tell the people the truth that it would heavily rely on the West Africa Power Pool Project (WAPP) and other foreign donor support to hit such target.

And that since Sierra Leone has benefitted billions of dollars from United States and other donor partners, yet still the country is known as African darkest country, suspicious of doubts have been raised by some development experts that CRET initiative might not make any difference in the energy sector and food provision for Sierra Leoneans might never be solved despite government appears to be seen on its “Feed Salone” flagship project.

To doubt plans on capacitating the energy sector, a recent statement by US’s official on America’s assistance to Sierra Leone government on improving the country’s power supply paints a stark picture of Sierra Leone’s government weaknesses and lack of readiness to strengthen inerratic electricity supply in the country.

“We have invested significant time and resources working together first, through a $44million Threshold Program, and since December 2022 to develop a compact program that has the potential to significantly impact the lives of the people of Sierra Leone,” US’s Millennium Challenge Cooperation (MCC) July 21, 2023 statement reads in part.

Despite billions of dollars are being poured on Sierra Leone’s energy sector and agriculture over decades ago and even now, there are still continuous power cut in the country while government still imports rice, spending huge dollars than it would have thought long ago to strengthen mechanized and subsistence farming.

Since WAPP electric poles are underway  which will benefit Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Guniea and Liberia, it means the money to be used to undertake these projects might not hugely comes alone from Bio’s government.

But President Maada Bio seems to take the all the credits as he repeatedly mentioned in his latest speech that his government ever is ready to provide reliable solutions to energy supply and food sufficiency.

“My government long time vision is to position Sierra Leone as an agriculture powerhouse and a regional hub for energy. We aim to achieve this by mobilizing investment for one gigawatts energy generation capacity over the next ten to fifteen years,”

“To accomplish this project, my government is committed to developing policies and programmes to achieve climate resilience and energy transformation that is inclusive and leaving no one behind,” Bio said during the launching ceremony of a government initiative called National Climate Resilience and Energy Transition Dialogue.