2023-07-10 22:12:58
In Sierra Leone, re-elected President Julius Maada Bio will have to deal with an economic crisis that has continued to worsen since last year. With 43% inflation over one year, nearly 60% of the population now lives below the poverty line… Observers warn of food insecurity that has become worrying.
From our special correspondent in Freetown,
In the streets of Freetown, in the post-election period, the inhabitants are unanimous: the urgency is to compensate for the increase in the price of foodstuffs… More than 50% over the past 12 months. In a deserted shop, Mustaphe Ekke, a shopkeeper from the Victory Park district, recounts his daily struggle. ” Before, you might go to any fried rice shop and buy a portion of rice for 5,000 Leones. Now it’s beyond our means. You go to the shop, and they tell you it’s 12,000, 15,000 leones. Let’s also talk regarding the cheapest food in our country, the one that is so insignificant that we never asked ourselves the question of being able to afford it or not… Garri, cassava semolina. Today, even garri has become expensive. It’s 5,000 leones a cup of garri, whereas before you got three for 1,000 leones! »
For Antoine Esteban, Country Director of Action Against Hunger in Sierra Leone, the food insecurity situation in the country is ” worrying “. This now affects 81% of the population, according to the World Food Programme, i.e. more than 6 million people. And half of Sierra Leoneans have insufficient food consumption. « We observe various negative coping strategies, regularly adopted by the poorest segment of the population, such as reducing the number of meals per day, or the consumption of immature crops. It should also be noted that with generalized inflation, there is an increase in production costs for farmers, who represent the majority of the population, which translates into a drop in their income and, as a result, in their ability meet their food security needs, and those of their households. »
At the root of the problem, an insufficiently financed and developed agricultural system… And the country’s hyper-dependence on imports, explains Jamie Hitchen, a Canadian researcher specializing in Sierra Leone. ” For basic foodstuffs, for almost all goods, they export almost nothing and import almost everything. This means that with the increase in the price of global commodities, the price of commodities in Sierra Leone is increasing astronomically. Sierra Leone was a rice exporter at the time of independence. And then the civil war broke out, and it had a disastrous impact on the economy. And now there’s a lot of investor interests to overcome… A lot of people are making a lot of money importing things into this country. »
Finally, Sierra Leone is one of the West African countries most seriously affected by climate change, which is seriously affecting its agricultural production.
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