Sierra Leone

Digital School Census in 10 Weeks? How it was done in Sierra Leone

Data being collected from students in Port Loko, Sierra Leone. (Photo: Kabira Namit/World Bank)
Les données concernent entre autres les élèves de Port Loko, Sierra Leone. (Photo: Kabira Namit/Banque mondiale)

Note: This blog is specifically about Sierra Leone’s successful transition to a digital school census but has broader implications for other countries who plan to adopt digital tools at a wider scale to collect data and monitor education and healthcare facilities in their countries.

In April of last year, the new Minister of Finance of Sierra Leone approached the World Bank with a strong commitment to prioritize education and an intriguing request.

Scaling up innovations in agriculture: Lessons from Africa

The West Africa Agricultural Productivity Program is building a sustainable and nutritious food system in Nigeria that creates jobs for youth. Photo: Dasan Bobo/World Bank

For too long the narrative surrounding Africa’s agri-food sector has been one of limited opportunity, flat yields and small farms. It’s true that Africa is still producing too little food and value-added products despite recent efforts to increase investment, and that agricultural productivity has been broadly stagnant since the 1980s as shown in the 2018 African Agriculture Status Report.

How do Africans’ priorities align with the SDGs and government performance? New results from Afrobarometer

One of the challenges presented by the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) laid out in the UN 2030 Agenda is where to begin.

Afrobarometer, which conducts public attitude surveys in more than 30 African countries, argues that one critical place to start is by asking the people.

Making extractives work for the people

In many countries, natural resources and extractive minerals are lucrative state assets that fail to contribute to economic prosperity. In resource-rich Africa, regulatory mismanagement, corruption and theft of natural resource and extractive commodities have contributed to illicit financial flows, poverty, instability and in some cases financed civil wars linked to conflicts over control of state assets.

What did 200 African incubators learn from our webinar on open innovation?

Also available in: Français

Niger Digital. — ***Entrepreneurs participating in the e-Takara competition to address specific challenges expressed by Nigerien public administrations. Credit: Niger Digital***

“The training has completed my knowledge about open innovation. I can now go and talk to potential clients to identify their needs and show what we can offer them.” -- Mariem Kane, Hadina RIMTIC incubator

Distributive, participative and decentralized, open innovation programs can pave the way for start-ups to access larger markets and business opportunities. They also allow corporate partners to respond quickly to changing market dynamics and test out new products or target new audiences.

In data-scarce environments, disruptive thinking is needed: Freetown transport resilience

When our team started working in Freetown one year ago, we found very limited data on how people move or what are the public transport options to access jobs and services from different neighborhoods. How do you plan your public transport system when you do not have data? And what if you are also constrained by a highly vulnerable environment to natural disasters and poverty? Keep reading: Disruptive thinking has the answer.

Context

Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city, is a vibrant city with an increasing population and a growing economy—and probably the best beaches in the region. It is a densely populated, congested city situated on a hilly peninsula surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the estuary of the Sierra Leone River and mountains, with very little flat space. The city creates 30% of the country’s GDP, which evidences the importance for the national economy. Although Freetown is the main employment center in Sierra Leone, the access to jobs and services in the city is heavily impaired by inadequate transport services and infrastructure and a chronic congestion.

A disaster that could have been avoided: Enhancing resilience with land and geospatial data

Areas affected by the August 2017 mudslide in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
(Photos: Robert Reid and Ivan Bruce / World Bank)

On August 14, 2017, after three days of intense rain, a massive side slope of the Sugar Loaf – the highest mountain in the north of Sierra Leone’s Western Area Peninsula – collapsed and slipped into the Babadorie River Valley.

The mudslide affected about 6,000 people. Up to 1,141 of them were declared dead or missing. The deadly disaster also caused major destruction of infrastructure near the capital city of Freetown.

What caused the slope to collapse? A complex set of factors, such as record-breaking rainfall and nature of the slope, may have contributed to the incident. However, many expert assessments suggest it was mainly "a man-made disaster" due to the rapid urbanization and expansion of Freetown – coupled with poor urban planning.

Like most West African cities, Freetown is plagued with unregulated building structures, residential housing in disaster-prone hilltop areas, and unplanned settlements that intensify deforestation and increase the risk of mudslides. To make things worse, many of the properties affected by the August 2017 mudslide were encroaching on the Western Area National Park, a forest reserve that still holds one of the last reserves of unspoiled forest in Sierra Leone.

Citizens lead Sierra Leone’s path to quality service delivery

Community of Mapaki's Community Monitoring Group Members, Ward 112, Bombali District. Photo: World Bank

When was the last time you participated in a community and worked together to reach a common goal? Communities across Sierra Leone are doing just that.

Congratulations to the First Recipients of the Certificate in Development Journalism

When I was based in the field, I often noticed that many of the journalists working in Africa had not been specifically trained to report on development-related matters, which at times hobbled their ability to effectively identify development issues and, by extension, inform the public of the choices and activities implemented in various countries.

So, we came up with the idea of helping journalists receive the best training we could give on the development challenges facing their continent, thus paving the way for “changing the narrative on Africa.”

The World Bank Africa Region introduced a successful, innovative approach to training journalists – a free, online course for 100 journalists from Francophone Africa, who were selected through an application process.

What’s the latest systems research on the quality of governance?

Blog reader: “Dan! The government is one big system. Why didn’t your blog on the latest research on the quality of governance take this into account?”
Dan (Rogger): “Well, typically frontier papers in the field don’t frame their work as ‘modeling the system’ [which do?] However, Martin Williams at the Blavatnik School of Government hosted a conference last week on ‘Systems of Public Service Delivery in Developing Countries’ that directly aims to discuss how research can take into account the systemic elements of governance.

Sierra Leone

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