Mariam Abangua, a vegetable seller at the busy open-air Lumley market in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, says the economic downturn in her country has been so sharp that she has cut back on food to one meal a day.
“We’re suffering in this country,” said Abangua. The widowed mother of five said she was not selling enough at the market to compensate for rising food and transport costs and was struggling to cover university fees for two of her children.
As voters in the west African nation go to the polls on Saturday, the soaring cost of staple goods such as rice and bread will dominate their concerns. Incumbent president Julius Maada Bio, of the Sierra Leone People’s party, is vulnerable to an upset if voters hold him responsible for their increasing hardship. Bio is seeking re-election in a rematch of the 2018 vote against Samura Kamara of the All People’s Congress (APC).
“Expectations are very high. Because when people believe the current system has failed them, they’re looking for salvation,” Kamara, a former minister and central bank governor, told the Financial Times in an interview.
While Abangua and many others at Lumley crave an APC victory, Raheem Sheriff, a 40-year-old shopkeeper, said either candidate must make fixing Sierra Leone’s economic problems the priority if they win the election.
“I cannot live the life I used to before,” said Sheriff, who has cut back on non-essentials, including tinned sardines. “If I try to do so, I’ll have nothing saved and that will bring more suffering.”
Bio, a retired brigadier who briefly led a military junta during the country’s 1991-2002 civil war, said many African countries had been hit hard by rocketing food and fuel prices sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Annual inflation in Sierra Leone, which is a net importer of most of what it consumes, hit 43 per cent in April.
“The cost of living crisis is a global phenomenon. It’s been difficult for any country to escape it,” he said.
The Ukraine war interrupted Sierra Leone’s recovery from a downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Government debt is now 92 per cent of gross domestic product. The IMF, which disbursed $20.7mn to Freetown this month as part of its extended credit facility arrangement, predicts GDP growth will slow to 2.7 per cent this year, down from 3.6 per cent in 2022.
But the government was not blameless, said Abu Bakarr Kamara, project co-ordinator at the Budget Advocacy Network watchdog. He pointed to a 2019 decision to cancel mining contracts such as those of China’s Shandong Iron & Steel Company and US-owned Sierra Leone Mining Company, both of which operate large iron concessions, in a dispute over royalties.
Revoking the licences led to a decline in export revenues in the first years of Bio’s administration, he said. Gerald Group, which owns SLMC, reached a settlement with the government two years ago, while Shandong’s concession was awarded to another Chinese operator.
The government had also failed to lead by example when citizens across the country of 8.4mn people were tightening their belts, said Bakarr Kamara, citing a big increase in officials’ overseas travel that had heightened voters’ concerns over how public money was spent.
“Even if the resources spent [on travel and other expenses] are not that much, [a reduction in spending] helps to build confidence with citizens that their government is also feeling the pinch and taking action,” he said.
APC candidate Kamara, 72, aims to exploit this public frustration. He claimed the last APC administration had done a better job on the economy even as it contended with an Ebola epidemic, a commodity price crash that led to a 21 per cent contraction in GDP in 2015 and large-scale mudslides that killed thousands and devastated parts of Freetown in 2017.
He said he would cut “bloated” government expenditure and boost the tax revenue-to-GDP ratio of 11 per cent — below the 16 per cent average of African countries — without “increasing it beyond what the businesses can pay”.
Kamara is on trial over allegations of misappropriating $2.5mn of funds while serving as foreign minister. He denies the charges, which he says are politically motivated.
Both candidates agree Sierra Leone requires more foreign capital in its mining and agricultural sectors to boost growth and employment. “We have to ask [western partners and investors] to inject more development-oriented funding,” said Kamara.
Bio is campaigning on his record of investing in education, in a country with one of the world’s lowest literacy rates, and efforts to reduce child and maternal mortality. “Our reforms are positively impacting the lives of the people,” he said.
Candidates need to secure at least 55 per cent of the vote to win outright and avoid a runoff. Polls indicate the president is favourite to win a second term, helped by his party’s alliance with the National Grand Coalition, which finished third in the 2018 election.
Jamie Hitchen, an independent west Africa analyst, said Bio’s tenure had been “a mixed bag”, with achievements such as increased investment in education and repeal of the death penalty weighed against “concerns about shrinking civic space and the police’s approach to protests”.
In the capital’s Congo Town neighbourhood, a group of street vendors declined to be interviewed by the FT, with one saying: “If you say too much, the government can arrest you.”
Almost 30 people were killed during cost-of-living protests in Freetown in August last year. Rights groups called for an investigation into the police’s handling of the protests, which the government claimed was orchestrated by opposition politicians.
Many are concerned about the potential for unrest around the election. Tejan Bah, a 39-year-old roadside foreign exchange trader, said a country that had experienced civil war could ill-afford to flirt with violence.
“Look at your future,” Bah advised voters. “Some people don’t have sense and want trouble. If a politician tells you to come out and cause trouble, say you’re not interested.”
