In this final part of my series on Tejan Kabbah's legacy, I examine his government's performance in the area of economic growth and development. The key focus would be a look at the Kabbah government's performance, or non-performance, in the promotion and protection of his people's economic, social and cultural rights. 

As I noted in my last two installments of this series, the Kabbah presidency made some slight gains in the promotion and protection of the civil and political liberties of the people, at least as far as putting in place democratic institutions and ending the civil war are concerned, even when his government's high-handed handling of the country's media practitioners and its failure to repeal the obnoxious Public Order Act of 1965 which criminalizes libel cast a  huge shadow over these gains, however small they may be. And so while Kabbah could be said to have at least slightly delivered on the first of the twin 1966 United Nations covenants (civil and political rights), his performance in the second (economic, social and cultural rights) is nothing to write home about. However, I have observed few gains in the latter and to be fair to the Kabbah Presidency I would like to open this analysis by looking at them while the remaining part would look at some of its key drawbacks in this area.

 Economic Stability: The Kabbah presidency must be commended for having succeeded in stabilizing the country's economy at both macro and micro levels. At least at the macro level, it has been able to win the support of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by successfully implementing most of the benchmarks set out by these institutions. This has made it possible for Sierra Leone to benefit from multilateral and bilateral economic aid from for instance the EU, UN, DFID, the World Bank and the African Development Bank etc. This also made it possible for Sierra Leone to qualify just a couple of months ago for the final cancellation of its external debt running to about US$350 million. At the micro level, while overall growth in terms of GDP has been sluggish, inflation has been considerably checked with a sound fiscal policy which has seen the country's currency, the Leone, largely stable in relation to foreign currencies such as US dollar, British pound sterling and the Euro for the past four years.

Social Security: The setting up of the National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT) with statutory status by an Act of Parliament No. 5 of 2001 to administer Sierra Leone's National Pension Scheme has largely been greeted as a welcome move by most Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad. The Trust was set up to provide retirement and other benefits to meet the contingency needs of workers and their dependants. The scheme is particularly positive in reducing the risk of allowing the elderly population, or the disabled, to wallow in abject poverty following retirement, or disability. It is indeed a new initiative that must be commended as one of the positive legacies of the Tejan Kabbah presidency.

Education: This has no doubt been viewed as a major success story in the legacy of the Tejan Kabbah presidency. The right to education is a fundamental human right particularly enshrined in the International Covenant for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1966. Little wonder that it is one of the key indices of development measured in the United Nations Human Development Report. This sector, according to statistics of the Human Development Index (HDI), has witnessed a steady progress in Sierra Leone over the years.  In the area of adult literacy for instance, Sierra Leone ranked 122^nd out of 176 with 35.1% for ages 15 and older in the 2006 HDI. The picture looked even better in the sector of combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio where Sierra Leone ranked 119^th with 64.8%. A very impressive record indeed for the Kabbah presidency, up from 17 - 21 % overall literacy rate at the beginning of its tenure in 1996. In keeping with its decentralization of government functions and institutions, the Tejan Kabbah government, with the help of massive donor funding, has succeeded in building many primary and secondary schools throughout the country.

Religion: Sierra Leone has for long been a secular state providing an atmosphere of tolerance and co-existence among the various religions ranging from Islam, Christianity to Animism and other smaller religious sects.  Tejan Kabbah, who happens to be the first Muslim head of state in a country that is predominantly Muslim, accounting for about 65% of the population, has so far succeeded in building on this religious tolerance culture. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged this while addressing the US Congress in September 2006, "The government policy continued to contribute to the generally free practice of religion," a release from the American embassy in Freetown reported. And so as far as freedom of worship as a cultural freedom is concerned, the Tejan Kabbah presidency would continue to occupy the psyche of Sierra Leoneans for some time to come.

So far so good; that is as far as you can go in acknowledging the gains registered by the Kabbah presidency in the fostering of the people's economic, social and cultural rights. For the remaining part of this article I would be looking at its rather poor performance in the area of human development especially in poverty alleviation, which has the potential of casting a cloud on all the gains made above.

Human Development: The Human Development Index of the United Nations which looks at development not only in terms of GDP but also, and more importantly, in terms   of a much broader definition of well-being,  has been placing Sierra Leone at the bottom of the ladder for the past twelve years, almost throughout the Tejan Kabbah presidency. Until the official end of the country's civil war in January 2002, the Kabbah government has been using this crisis to explain its very poor HDI performance. That excuse ceased to be valid over 5 years ago and yet Sierra Leone continues to wallow in the bottom of the HDI table. For three years in a row (2002, 2003, 2004), Sierra Leone was ranked as the poorest country in the world at 176^th, while it jumped just one point to 175^th to become last but one in 2005 and 2006 ahead of Niger coming last at 176^th.

The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and enrolment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP, income). In terms of the first, life expectancy, Sierra Leone made a very little progress 41 years (2005, 2006) up from 39 (2002, 2003, 2004); in terms of the second, literacy (education), Sierra Leone registered considerable progress in the 2006 HDI statistics as noted earlier, while in terms of the third, low income and low purchasing power (abject poverty), the country continues to perform miserably as it was ranked 172^nd in per capita GDP (US$ 561) in the 2006 HDI.

While the HDI has often been criticized for failing to provide a holistic measurement of human development, especially indicators for inequality and respect for human rights and political freedoms, it does however provide a much broader framework for measuring human progress and the complex relationship between income and well-being than measurement only in terms of GDP per capita income. The HDI therefore remains the most credible means by which a country's progress in meeting the challenges of human development can be monitored and measured. The question as to why Sierra Leone has been struggling to improve its HDI despite all the chest beating of a somewhat stable macro and micro economic stability, coupled with the country's vast natural resources and massive donor funding continues to rage and haunt Sierra Leoneans at home and in the Diaspora. I recently had to bow my head in shame in front of my students when I found it difficult to field a question about how Sierra Leone ranked last but one in the 2006 HDI with all the “diamond wealth” the country has been blessed with. It was in a follow-up seminar to a lecture I had just delivered on the ‘right to development' where the HDI 2006 Report came up for special discussion, and guess what! I was able to wriggle my way out of the embarrassment by saying ‘Sierra Leone is indeed richly endowed with natural wealth but that its people are poor because of bad leadership'.

And indeed bad leadership is largely to blame for the persistence of Sierra Leone's negative HDI, especially during  the last five years (the last term of the Kabbah presidency) . The figures are simply not adding up. This hard reality becomes even more disturbing when you compare Sierra Leone to other countries that have recently emerged from civil wars; countries such as Rwanda, Guinea Bissau, Angola, Sudan etc. fared better in the 2006 HDI table than Sierra Leone. Although, for some reasons that are not readily available, Liberia has not been featuring in the HDI statistics, there are indications that the country has been making progress in its reconstruction efforts far ahead of Sierra Leone. At least it is on record that Tejan Kabbah, on the invitation of his counterpart in Liberia, recently participated in a historic state commissioning of an electricity project that brought light to some sections of Monrovia, while Freetown remained, and unfortunately still remains, in perpetual darkness.

Electricity: This brings me to one of the most talked about shortcomings of the Tejan Kabbah Presidency. By all accounts, Freetown and the rest of Sierra Leone, remain darker today than before the Kabbah presidency came on board. The failure of the Kabbah presidency to prioritize this important sector of the country's development can best be explained in terms of its inability to fulfill one of its campaign promises in the 1996 and 2002 elections to conclude the Bumbuna Hydro Electricity Project which, if completed, is capable of generating light for the rest of Sierra Leone and some neighbouring countries. In an interview in 2002 with Vice President Berewa in Paris where he was leading Sierra Leone's delegation to a World Bank Donor's  conference, he told me that the government needed about $45 million to complete the Bumbuna project and that he was positive that the government would soon get the money and complete the project. Here we are some five years down the line and yet no sign of this promise being fulfilled. The government has since then been making pledges that the Bumbuna project would soon see the light of day. The latest of these pledges came early last year that come December that year the Bumbuna project would be completed and fully operational. December 2006 came and went with nothing to show for this. The government, in good measure, has since stopped making pledges on when the project would be completed.

Two conspiracy theories have emerged to explain the delayed government action on Bumbuna. The first, which predates the Kabbah presidency, suggests that the expatriates (the Italians or what have you) who have been working on the project have been busy secretly mining gold around the Bumbuna falls and so have not been in any hurry to finish the job as this would signal the end of their secret exploitation. The second suggests that businessmen who have been involved in the importation of generators that have recently been baptized ‘Kabbah tigers' have been able to strike a deal with government to drag their feet on Bumbuna because the completion of that project would mean bad, or no, business for them. The smallest of these ‘Kabbah tigers' go for anything between $200 and $300 and only the affluent sections of the Freetown population can afford them. In fact what makes them even more out of reach, even for most so-called middle class families, is the maintenance cost of these machines, including of course oil to power them. And so for the majority of Sierra Leoneans who cannot afford the ‘Kabbah Tigers' living in almost perpetual black-out is the order of the day. A colleague who recently visited Freetown reported that the deafening sound  of these ‘Kabbah Tigers' is the only thing that keep people awake a little late into the night, more so for those who cannot afford them. The situation is no better in the provinces. Kenema and Bo, which used to enjoy near uninterrupted electricity supply, thanks to the Kenema Dodo Hydro and Bo Danish funded electricity projects, recently suffered a series of setbacks largely blamed on the lack of maintenance culture. The other big regional towns such as Makeni, Koidu etc. continue to suffer save for those who can afford the ‘Kabbah Tigers'

Water: This also constitutes a huge challenge to the Kabbah Presidency. Providing access to water, a fundamental right that all people must enjoy, cannot be said to be an issue that has been prioritized by the Kabbah presidency if the acute water shortage that recently hit Freetown and its environs is anything to go by.  This provoked a very big outcry by a population already ostensibly frustrated by the constant lack of electricity. In fact in some cases the water scarcity was caused by electricity failure since the latter was needed to power Guma Valley Water Supply machines. Human development cannot take place without that basic ingredient of water. This largely explains why access to water was the main focus of 2006 Human Development Report released by the United Nations Development Programme. The problem is even worse in the provinces. In fact water wells rather than tap water are common features in most big towns in the provinces, not to talk of small towns and villages.

Roads and Bridges: This remains another area where the Kabbah government has made little or no progress. Despite huge funding from the African Development Bank and the European Union specifically targeting this sector, the road network linking the big and small cities is still desperately crying for attention. Very few new bridges and roads have been constructed by the country's Road Authority and this situation has considerably affected the free movement of people. Take for example the proposed Freetown-Lungi Bridge, one of the key campaign promises of the Tejan Kabbah presidency, still remains on paper. At least three conspiracy theories have been advanced to explain the delay to realize this promise. First, the businessmen who are involved in air (15 minutes) and ferry (1 hour) travel across the Rokel estuary that separates  the country's capital from Lungi International Airport have since struck a deal to delay the bridge project because this would simply kick them out of business. Second, there is the argument that government is likely to make more money from tax accruing from this air and ferry crossing than if it were a toll imposed on the proposed bridge. Finally, it is being argued that if the bridge were to be constructed this would open a floodgate of rural-urban migration that would worsen the problem of urbanization that the capital Freetown is now struggling to cope with. While the last two theories may sound somehow plausible, the long term positive implications for economic development of the bridge in terms of promoting trade and export-led agriculture are more likely to overwhelm them. As far as the first theory is concerned, it is only hoped that it is unfounded, otherwise it would be taken to mean that the government is only interested in satisfying the whims and caprices of those businessmen without any regard for the interest of the people they are supposed to serve.

Food and basic survival: The right to food, the right for every individual to have three square meals a day, is another fundamental right that the Tejan Kabbah presidency has failed to deliver. And this with all the hocus-pocus associated with Tejan Kabbah's historic pledge in the wake of the 2002 presidential campaigns that if he is elected he would ensure that by the end of his second term in 2007 no Sierra Leonean would go to bed on an empty stomach. The question that has since been raging as the clock ticks to the end of his presidency is to what extent can we say Kabbah's pledge resonates with the reality on the ground. First of all going by the 2006 HDI statistics you would see that living standards have not got better, rather they have been going downhill with more than 60 per cent of the country's population living way below the poverty line—on less than $2 a day. When translated in concrete terms this means over 60 per cent of the country's population can hardly afford two square meals a day not to talk of the required three to beat the hunger line.  This is the reality. Perhaps the Kabbah presidency should be commended for its vigorous decentralization of agricultural productivity and the boosting of small scale commercial and subsistence farming through the micro-credit scheme, although it is clear that this is yet to translate into making Sierra Leone food self-sufficient to the extent that no Sierra Leonean would go to bed hungry.

Health: The dismal performance of the Kabbah presidency in this sector was exposed by the 2006 HDI which placed life expectancy at 41.0 years for adults; the picture becomes even more gloomy when you factor in the high infant mortality and the increasing mortality caused by curable diseases such as malaria and typhoid fever. Lack of adequate logistics and the dwindling numbers of health workers, especially medical doctors and nurses, to cope with the increasing demand for medical attention are largely to blame for this failure of the medical sector. The Kabbah presidency must be commended for bringing in a team of Cuban doctors to help manage the manpower crisis although it is not clear whether the government had since made any move to replace them following their recent return home. Moreover, a more proactive policy by the Kabbah presidency would have prevented these huge logistical and manpower problems that the health sector has been struggling with. And so the health sector did not feature prominently on the agenda of the Tejan Kabbah presidency, an unfortunate kind of situation given the importance of the health sector in any country's human development.

Employment: This sector refused to make any serious progress under the Tejan Kabbah presidency. Because of the poor investment climate caused by uncertainties such as the rampant bouts of black out, water shortage, corruption etc only very few jobs, largely in the private mobile communications sector, have been created. Youth unemployment remains a huge problem, a situation which has forced some human rights organizations to warn that the country may slide into yet another round of instability if something is not urgently done to arrest this negative trend. This partly explains the growing disillusionment among youths over what they largely describe as a deliberate attempt by the authorities to neglect their concerns. And we should not forget in a hurry that youth disenchantment with the authorities in Freetown was one of the main reasons advanced to explain the country's civil war. The government was recently seen marketing the country's tourism and trade opportunities with a view to attracting foreign direct investment but the impact of this drive is yet to be felt on the ground as, apart from the Chinese, there is very little evidence of any serious inflow of foreign investors into the country. Of course political stability is very necessary to attract foreign investors but there are also the less obvious paraphernalia like good roads, uninterrupted electricity and water supply system, reliable air and sea travels, transparency and accountability, good health centres etc. that need to be in place to complete this attraction. And for all you know, while we can readily point to political stability as very much evident throughout Sierra Leone, we can hardly say the same for the gaps in the investment climate highlighted above. And so the employment deficit refuses to be humbled; and this at the peril of Sierra Leone's growing youth population. The noble ideals of NASSIT, no doubt a success story in the Tejan Kabbah  legacy, would have had more impact if the government had succeeded in narrowing the youth employment gap, for after all people have to be employed before they start thinking about security in retirement or eventual disability.                

Conclusion: While it is true that the fiscal policies of the Tejan Kabbah government have been largely commended by international financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF with their attendant fall-out evident in the country's macro and micro economic stability, they have so far failed to translate into human development for the people of Sierra Leone. As I noted above, apart from education, social security for retirement and disability, and religious tolerance, where the Kabbah presidency registered some success, the country's overall human development goals cannot be said to have been attained under this regime. At least other important variables of a holistic human development such as access to electricity and water supply, food, health, access to good roads and bridges and employment have been largely absent making it virtually impossible for the people of Sierra Leone to attain their fullest human potential.

Human development is all about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive lives according to their needs and interests. People are the real wealth of nations. Development is thus about expanding the choices people have to lead lives that they value. It is therefore unfortunate that the Kabbah presidency failed to score any worthwhile success in ensuring the human development of his people.

While the overriding influence on development exercised by international institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, as well as NGOs and multinational corporations in dictating policies in developing countries like Sierra Leone, which mostly favour the national interests of their home countries, is partly to blame, the fact that other countries in similar situation, as mentioned earlier in this article, have been able to beat the odds and make a huge difference in promoting their peoples' human development, makes that excuse less tenable.

And so broadly speaking, while the Kabbah presidency, at least on average, fared better in the promotion of the people's political liberties, especially in sustaining the much cherished civic democratic culture and institutions, albeit this was watered down a bit by his high-handed handling of the press and far from satisfactory campaign against corruption (as discussed in the first and second parts of this series), its handling of the their fundamental human development sadly met with unqualified success (as discussed in this final part).

pictured left (Tejan Kabbah)

*Author Dr Ibrahim Seaga Shaw is publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Expo Times. He is also Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Politics, University of the West of England, UK