By: James Kamara-Manneh
President Julius Maada Bio has played host to the United States Ambassador for Sierra Leone, Maria Brewer, accompanied by officials of the Millennium Challenge Cooperation (MCC). The delegation met the President to express thanks and appreciation to the government and people of Sierra Leone for passing the MCC score card, which makes the country eligible to receive a grant of $400 million dollars from the United States government.
“I am pleased to congratulate the government of Sierra Leone on passing the 2021 MCC scorecard”, Ambassador Brewer stated.
In response, President Bio recommitted to sustaining the strides in deepening good governance as a basis for sustainable development and peace consolidation.
“We will continue building on our grains in tackling corruption, promoting democratic rights and economic freedoms. We look forward to strengthened partnership with the American government and people”, President Bio said.
The President made the commitment at its quarterly meeting on December 15the where the Millennium Challenge Cooperation (MCC) Board of Directors selected new countries that have won the grant. The Board unanimously selected Sierra Leone for a new compact- MCC’s five years grant program to reduce poverty through targeted investment that assures economic growth.
The MCC is a U.S foreign aid agency that provides support to developing countries as a reward for meeting key indicators that are geared towards fighting widespread poverty through economic growth. The compact was created in 2004, consisting 20 indicators grouped under three broad categories namely: economic freedom, ruling justly and investing in people.
The control of corruption indicator falls under the category of ruling justly. There are three categories of grant for candidate countries- compact threshold program and concurrent compact for regular investments.
Countries eligible for this support are graded every year based on these policy indicators used to determine eligibility for the grant.
Sierra Leone in 2015 qualified for the threshold program and won $44.4 million dollar. The country is currently implementing that program through provision of financially viable electricity and water service in Freetown.
The 2020 scorecard marked the first time Sierra Leone passed all three major targets: fighting corruption, promoting democratic freedom and passing half of the total indicators. In total the country passed 11 indicators.
The country notably performed well in trade policy, scoring 70%. It also did remarkably well in the area of providing primary education, where it scored 68%, health expenditure 68%, Rule of Law 58% and freedom of information 85%.
It is assumed that the compact has transformative prospect for private sector boost to accelerate sustainable economic development in Sierra Leone.
