Devastated by a 10-year civil war that ended in 2001, Sierra Leone is working hard to rebuild its economy and put its people back to work with the help of the international community.
Gerald Caplan reviews Phil Clark's book on 'the country's remarkable experiment in transitional justice'.
John Donnelly
When Haja Zainab Bangura, Sierra Leone's Health and Sanitation Minister, returned home from a trip to Ethiopia a month ago, she was exhausted and went right to bed. In the middle of the night, her phone rang. A friend was in labour at the Princess Christian Maternity Hospital in Freetown, and she was bleeding profusely.
Bangura made some calls and a Ministry consultant, who was a medical doctor, arrived at the hospital just as she did. They learned her friend had fallen off a hospital bed, bled to death, and lost her baby. Moments later, Bangura encountered another distressed woman in labour nearby, just outside the operating room. No doctor was on call. The Ministry consultant stepped in, delivered a stillborn baby, but saved the mother's life. In the span of roughly an hour, the Minister had witnessed three deaths.
In making a presentation on its relevance to Africa to my World Bank colleagues, I counted six messages that are new and different.
1. 21st century violence is different from 20th century violence.
2. Conflict and violence are caused by a combination of weak institutions and external stresses.
3. Build good-enough coalitions to break the cycle of repeated violence.
4. Create jobs, even with second-best approaches that are inefficient and likely not sustainable.
5. Address external stresses alongside institution building.
6. International partners should do more good than harm.
The World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security, and Development examines the changing nature of violence in the 21st century, and underlines the negative impact of repeated cycles of violence on a country or region’s development prospects. Preventing violence and building peaceful states that respond to the aspirations of their citizens requires strong leadership and concerted national and international efforts.
The Modern Development Enterprise
Compact for Inclusive Growth and Prosperity: Report of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Eminent Persons Group on the Least Developed Countries March 2011
‘Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding and We Can Improve the World Even More’ by Charles Kenny argues that life in much of Africa and in most of the impoverished world has improved at an unprecedented clip in recent decades, even if economic growth hasn’t.
The Africa CEO Summit that The Times hosted in London yesterday exhibited both the hope and the anxiety on that remarkable continent.
Promoting effective public sectors is one of the most daunting development challenges that the world faces. Development institutions such as the World Bank and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development have supported programs that strengthen public sectors, promote good governance, and combat corruption for the last 15 years with little to show for it. The fact that even financial regulators in the United States and the United Kingdom failed to use their existing powers or to keep pace with rapidly evolving markets is a humbling reminder that effective public sectors are a challenge to maintain in even the most developed countries.
