Vice President of Sierra Leone, Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh, has launched the new World Bank report in Freetown titled: “Sierra Leone Human Capital Review: Maximizing Human Potential for Resilience and Inclusive Development”, welcoming its findings that Sierra Leone has made commendable strides in improving human capital development.
The report also notes that the government has demonstrated a strong commitment to enhancing the well-being and productivity of its population through significant investments in health and education. It further highlights the prioritisation of social protection interventions like cash transfers to extremely vulnerable groups as a notable intervention aimed at reducing poverty and building human capital.
The report provides critical insights into the country’s efforts to foster human capital development and economic growth and examines the current state of health, education, and social protection systems in the country with recommendations to enhance the effectiveness of human capital investments.
“The future socio-economic stability and prosperity of Sierra Leone is intrinsically linked to the well-being of its people,” said Abdu Muwonge, World Bank Country Manager for Sierra Leone. “This report provides a roadmap for the government and its partners to strengthen human capital, which is essential for Sierra Leone to achieve its full economic potential and improve the livelihoods of its citizens.”
The Free Quality Education, launched in 2018, helped to reduce barriers to accessing education with the Education Sector Plan (2022-2026) laying out the core priorities and presenting a road map to achieving the country’s education goals, according to a World Bank press release.
There have also been improvements in social protection coverage – the flagship social protection initiative, ‘Ep Fet Po’ cash transfer program, financed through the World Bank-supported Social Safety Net (SSN) Project, provides direct financial support to the most vulnerable populations, thereby contributing to the development of a more resilient and capable workforce.
However, Sierra Leone still faces challenges related to low human development outcomes, high poverty rates, and limited access to basic services, the report notes. The country ranks 151 out of 157 countries on the Human Capital Index (HCI). The HCI value is lower than the region’s average, indicating significant challenges in human capital development.
“The government of Sierra Leone has demonstrated a strong commitment to human capital. This report makes the case that one of the best investments a country can make is investing in its people,” said Ali Ansari, World Bank Senior Economist and one of the lead authors of the report. “A healthy, educated and skilled population is the cornerstone of Sierra Leone’s journey towards a resilient, prosperous and inclusive future.”
Sierra Leone’s Vice President, Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh, said he was very pleased to have been invited to launch the very important document, adding that the review itself, as many speakers before him had already highlighted, constituted a stocktaking exercise to assess policy actions as a government, but more importantly, their commitment to addressing ongoing human capital challenges in Siera Leone.
“It is evident that human capital development is vital to driving sustainable development and economic growth. I don’t need to emphasise the methodology, because just last week, I also had the honour to launch the Human Development Index Report of the United Nations.
“The idea is essentially to place investment in human development at the center stage of analysing the development and economic landscape of our country. The review, I must say, is very timely as we are launching it at a time that we are rolling out the big five game-changers,” he said.
Dr Juldeh Jalloh also stated that no doubt, the report provided a detailed and analytical insight into how far they had come as a government.
“This has been identified and clearly showcased by the story of Fatmata, but more importantly, how far we have gone and how we are faring now in relation to human capital development indicators. I want to use this opportunity to commend the World Bank country team for an in-depth analysis and a fantastic report. Thank you very much.
“But I must say that it is really pleasing to note that the review clearly states that Sierra Leone has made progress in improving key human development indicators. The report stated, and I quote, ‘despite an unfavourable economic landscape, Sierra Leone has made progress in improving key human development indicators in recent years… However, Sierra Leone still lags behind some of its regional counterpart’.”
The Vice President said he could only do justice to the launch if he tried to speak to some of the gains that they had made as a government and as a country, particularly in light of the vision of His Excellency Dr. Julius Maada Bio and as captured in his famous people-centered manifesto of 2018.
“I will also highlight some of the key challenges that will enable me to put into perspectives and share with you some of our ideas moving forward. I usually tell people that the difference between the President, I and the rest of the government is that the President and I are politicians. Our responsibilities are to give hope and also to deliver hope and we leave the ministers to work out the technicalities of ensuring that that hope gets to every Sierra Leonean.
“So today I’m going to go along that line, but first of all, identify the gains we have made and then share with you how we intend to improve on the investment we have made in human capital development and give frame to the hope that we will do better, and we are going to do better Insha Allah”.
“Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, let me start first with health: When we came in as a government in 2018, as it is already stated in the report, the budgetary allocation to health was 6%. And then we looked at the indicators for maternal and infant mortality rate and we realised that it was very, very appalling.
“We wanted to reduce maternal mortality, infant mortality and also wanted to improve quality healthcare delivery at all levels, particularly focusing on primary care. We spent the money. We moved from 6% to 8% to 9%. We went as far as 11.2%. Although we are still short of the Abuja Declaration that says every sub-Saharan African country should have to spend 15%.
“We are happy where we are. We are there not because we want to be there, it is because the resources are limited. So, we increase the health budget and then we transition. We came up with a model that we called a live stages model, where in the focus on healthcare was essentially the story of Fatmata. I was just imagining when the focus on Fatmata was about education.
“If you take this story of Fatmata from the Ministry of Education, it fits clearly to the life stages model when we also look at health, starting from the first 22 critical months since the woman gets pregnant, to the delivery at the infancy stage of that kid, we realised that we need to spend additional resources. We increase the workforce in the Ministry of Health by nearly 11,000 workers, recruited and expanded training of midwifery”.
