‘Kings’… this time, on ‘Thrones of Gold’
Sierra Leone. “Land of iron and diamonds”: in the 1970s, we had award-winning postage stamps that promoted our blessed country with those evocative words. We have to find a way to do aggressive Public Relations for our country again – as “Sierra Leone: One of the Richest Countries on Planet Earth”. It will be hype based on concrete realities of the mineral wealth in our geographical space. The message has started filtering into global consciousness of hard core business people.
Shandong Steel will invest US$ 1.5 billion in African Minerals’ Tonkolili mine located in Sierra Leone: that news blazed in global media about a month ago. Shandong Iron and Steel Group, one of China’s largest state-owned mills, has agreed to invest US$ 1.5 billion in African Minerals in an aim to expand access in our iron ore bonanza. The Wall Street Journal reported that the investment will grant Shandong Steel a 25 percent stake in the Tonkolili mining concession of African Minerals, which has a total value of US$ 6 billion. Shandong Steel’s investment follows China Railway Materials Commercial Corp., which paid US$ 247 million to become African Minerals’ second largest shareholder on June 18, 2010.
The almost two billion dollar investment news sent shares of the parent company of African Minerals spiking in major stock exchanges around the world.
Savvy PR on the over one billion dollar Chinese investment, blending it with earlier news of marketable petroleum deposits discovered on the continental ocean shelf of Sierra Leone, furnishes us with data to do marketing of the country as the new Eldorado on the planet. With patriotic and far-sighted politicians and governing elite shedding their skin of selfishness and inferiority complex, we can position Sierra Leone as the developing world’s new center for finance and business, of industry and commerce, and stimulate billions of dollars more in investments. In order to be in the vanguard of making concrete such a vision, I got my driver to weave my 1989 Mercedes through the wet streets of Freetown on a quest last week.
On Friday, September 17, 2010, I embraced Karomoh Kabbah in his Ministry of Mineral Resources and Political Affairs office on the 5th floor of Youyi Building in Freetown. Karomoh, who I had exchanged regular e-mails with when he was one of the fervid PMDC members based in the United States in 2006/2007, is currently the Director of Political Affairs in the Political Affairs Division in the innovative ministry where the suave and articulate Alhaji Alpha Kanu is Minister.
This merger of ‘mineral resources’ and ‘political affairs’ in one ministry is unprecedented in Sierra Leone’s political history. Even, discordant! At a casual glance, the new ministry appears to be pandering more to the ‘person’ of Alpha Kanu – who has to be significantly empowered as reward for the pivotal role he played in bringing the APC to power is 2007 against considerable odds; and recognition of his towering PR qualities – than showing administrative logic that would accentuate the President’s mantra of ‘running Sierra Leone like a business’. At second glance, one perceives some coherence in fusing mineral resources and political affairs.
Karomoh Kabbah guided me that the Mineral Resources Division exists “to promote mining investment and regulate the mining industry…through the adoption and implementation of appropriate policies and programmes geared towards the realization of potential economic benefits from mining and related activities for sustainable national development and improved quality of life and prosperity for the people of Sierra Leone….”
Given the billion dollar mode we are now in Sierra Leone I couldn’t miss that the PR documents in the mineral resources/political affairs ministry is not talking about ‘poverty alleviation’ but about “improved quality of life and prosperity for the people of Sierra Leone”. Prosperity!
Now, according to Karamoh Kabba, the Political Affairs Division is there “to monitor progress in legislation of issue concerning the Executive, facilitate a forum to support healthy dialogue between political parties, to develop political tolerance, to promote good governance and political awareness and to enhance sustainable peace and harmony to achieve a democratic culture for the development of Sierra Leone”. All that PR lingo only makes sense when one takes into consideration the recent history of Sierra Leone.
In terms of natural resources, we have always been an extremely wealthy nation. Yet, our very wealth has been used as weapons against us – hence, the term Blood Diamonds, with liberation fighters or drug-induced AK 47 wielding rebels (take your pick) between 1991 and 2000 waging one of the most brutal and nastiest wars ever in human history in the pursuit of our coveted diamonds.
An old joke popular in Sierra Leone is bitter testimony to the fact of the paradox that Sierra Leone has become: ‘When God created the world, He endowed Sierra Leone with such a wonderful wealth of natural resources that the angels protested. “Don’t worry,” God replied. “Just wait until you see the people I’ve put there.”‘ Of course, ‘God’ never said such things. It has to be ‘Satan’ who has inculcated such sick jokes into the minds of our people.
We can end this ‘paradox of plenty’ stigma: our country rich in mineral resources yet having the lowest scores in nearly all Human Development Indexes. Sierra Leone, even if at the budding stage again, is now in the vortex of another new wave of financial and commercial interest in Africa. We had been there before. Even before the land area we now occupy was made into the country known as ‘Sierra Leone’ today, we were one of the centers for the heinous trade in Negroid flesh and blood that history now labels the Atlantic Slave Trade. When that trade morphed into something less benign as European Colonialism of Africa in the late 19th Century, Sierra Leone again became the center for British colonialism in West Africa. In the 50 years of ‘independence’, Sierra Leone has had the enviable reputation of having in its soils about ‘the best jewelry diamonds in the world; the best grade of rutile….’; now, the world is learning that Sierra Leone is endowed with the largest iron ore deposits in Africa. And the growing ‘World Superpower’, China, has turned its focus on us
Chinese trade with Africa has been growing by 50% every year. Right now, it is worth $50bn (£25bn). By 2010, China will have overtaken the US and France as Africa’s biggest trading partner. This is still a fraction in the about $6 trillion ‘loose cash’ that China has. We can tap into that to maximize what we have already staring attracting. Can Alpha Kanu’s pacesetting ministry live up to its own creed – dialogue; political tolerance, etc. – and give greater meaning to President Ernest Bai Koroma’s avowed ‘Agenda for Change’?
Even if I get too close to the nerves of some of the political elite, my incessant demands for an end to the ‘Civil War Mentality’ among the governing class is aimed at nudging our governing elite to confront, and find a cure for, our most virulent national disease: out ethnic politics. Apparently, there is enough wealth in our country to ‘go around’ among nearly all our people, especially the educated elite. We must strive to be inclusive in all our decisions – and that means the ethnic jingoists must be reined. Other tribes, other regions, must be given access to what Nigerians call the ‘national cake’ – access to the national cake on a regional quota basis is like a political religious creed in Nigeria; a reason why that country has not exploded in spite of the demonic chasm in wealth between the rich and the poor, and the daunting developmental problems that has bedevil them. What has to be realized that the greater the marketable mineral wealth in a country the greater the stakes and the fiercer the competition among competing global interests. What our recent past should teach us is that we should not allow our crude selfishness, our narrow-mindedness and shortsightedness be used as ammunition by coolly-calculating outside business interest to instigate another orgy of cannibalistic competition among our people. This time around, let it not be said that we are ‘beggars sitting on thrones of gold’, rather, let us be spurred by the metaphysical message of my title here, ‘Kings…on thrones of gold’….
My hope can only become reality with a Freedom of Information law in place in Sierra Leone – that which will empower the majority of the educated ordinary people who have to provide leadership for the masses, and bridle the excesses of the governing elite. As I loped through the lobby of Youyi Building on my way to Karamoh Kabba on Friday, I bumped into Alhaji I.B. Kargbo, the Minister of Information and Communications. He was dressed in pin-striped dark gray well cut French suit; his rotund face that has de-accelerated the aging process exuding the prosperity of a bank proprietor. We embraced each other as the lift waited slightly for the Minister. He asked why he was not seeing me in Freedom of Information meetings; and said the government is certain to make the FOI bill into law soon. I was heartened by this news. And, it gives me greater hope that we will become ‘kings’ in Sierra Leone soon.
Oswald Hanciles, Freetown
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