Mariam Abangua, a vegetable seller at the busy open-air Lumley market in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, said her country’s recession was so severe that she ate only one meal a day.
“We suffer in this country,” Abangua said. The widow of five said she wasn’t selling enough at the market to cover rising food and transportation costs and was struggling to pay her two children’s college tuition.
Soaring prices for staples such as rice and bread will be a major concern for voters in the West African country as they head to the polls on Saturday. Julius Madabio, the current president of the Sierra Leone People’s Party, is easily disturbed if voters hold him responsible for their mounting hardship. Bio is seeking re-election in a rematch against Samura Kamara, who voted against the National People’s Congress (APC) in 2018.
“Expectations are very high. Because people are looking for redemption when they think the current system has let them down,” Kamara, a former minister and central bank governor, told the Financial Times.
While Abangua and many others in Lumley are eager for an APC victory, shopkeeper Raheem Sheriff, 40, said any candidate must make solving Sierra Leone’s economic problems their top priority in winning the election.
“I can’t live the life I used to,” said Sharif, who has cut back on non-essentials, including tinned sardines. “If I try to do that, I will have nothing and it will cause more pain.”
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Bio, a retired brigadier general who briefly led the junta during the country’s 1991-2002 civil war, said many African countries had been hit hard by a spike in food and fuel prices sparked by Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine. Sierra Leone’s annual inflation rate is a net importer of most of its consumer goods, up to 43% in April.
“The cost of living crisis is a global phenomenon. It is difficult for any country to escape it,” he said.
The Ukraine war has interrupted Sierra Leone’s recovery from the economic downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Government debt is now 92% of GDP. The International Monetary Fund this month paid $20.7 million to Freetown as part of its extended credit facility, which expects GDP growth to slow to 2.7% this year from 3.6% in 2022.
But Abu Bakarr Kamara, program coordinator at the Budget Advocacy Network Watchdog, said the government was not blameless. He pointed to a decision in 2019 to cancel mining contracts, such as those between China’s Shandong Iron and Steel Corp and US-owned Sierra Leone Mining Corp, both of which operate large iron ore concessions amid a royalty dispute.
License revocation results in Export earnings fall During the first few years of Bio’s administration, he said. The Gerald Group, which owns SLMC, settled with the government two years ago, while the Shandong concession was awarded to another Chinese operator.
Campaign poster for current President Julius Maada Bio in Freetown © John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images
Samura Kamara of the opposition National People’s Congress waves to supporters in Grafton © John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images
Bakarr Kamara said the government had also failed to lead by example as the country’s 8.4 million citizens tightened their belts, noting that a sharp increase in officials’ overseas travel had fueled voters’ concerns about how public money was being spent.
“Even if (travel and other expenses) cost modest resources, (reducing spending) helps reassure citizens that their government, too, is feeling the pressure and taking action,” he said.
Kamara, the 72-year-old APC candidate, aims to play on this public frustration. He claimed the previous APC government had done better economically, even as it was dealing with an Ebola outbreak, massive mudslides that killed thousands and devastated parts of Freetown, and commodities that contracted GDP by 21%. Prices plummeted in 2015.
He said he would cut “bloated” government spending and raise taxes to 11% of GDP – below the African country’s average of 16% – but not “increase to levels that businesses cannot pay”.
Kamara is on trial on charges of misappropriating $2.5 million of funds while he was foreign minister. He denies the allegations, saying they are politically motivated.
Both candidates agree that Sierra Leone needs more foreign capital into its mining and agricultural sectors to boost growth and employment. “We have to ask (Western partners and investors) for more development-oriented funding,” Kamara said.
Biot is touting his record of investing in education in a country with the world’s lowest literacy rate, and working to reduce child and maternal mortality. “Our reforms are having a positive impact on people’s lives,” he said.
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A candidate needs to get at least 55% of the vote to win outright and avoid a runoff. Polls show the president is the favorite to win a second term, buoyed by his party’s alliance with the National Grand Coalition, which finished third in the 2018 election.
Jamie Hitchen, an independent analyst for West Africa, said Biot’s tenure was “mixed”, with achievements such as increased investment in education and the abolition of the death penalty contrasting with “concerns about shrinking civic space and the way police responded to protests” .
“If you talk too much, the government will arrest you,” said one of a group of street vendors in the capital’s Congo Town neighborhood who declined to be interviewed by the Financial Times.
Nearly 30 people were killed in cost of living protests in Freetown last August. Rights groups have called for an investigation into police handling of the protests, which the government says were orchestrated by opposition politicians.
Many fear that there may be unrest around the election. Tejan Bah, a 39-year-old curb foreign exchange trader, said a country that has endured civil war cannot afford to flirt with violence.
“Look at your future,” Bah advises voters. “Some people are irrational and want trouble. If a politician asks you to come out and cause trouble, say you’re not interested.”