Sierra Leone

China’s Kingho Energy has clinched an agreement with the Ministry of Energy for the construction of one thermal and three hydroelectric power plants in Sierra Leone. Minister of...

After two seats controversially changed hands, the governing All People’s Congress (APC) is just one seat short of a two-thirds majority in Parliament. That’s the vote needed, if...

Nothing that President Ernest Bai Koroma has promised since coming to power in 2007 has excited as much hope as his pledges to improve the parlous state of...

The opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party is still struggling to find its feet in spite of a series of political and economic slips by the governing All People’s...

The biggest media crackdown since the civil war ended in 2002 is underway in Sierra Leone. Two editors of the Independent Observer newspaper, Jonathan Leigh and Bai Bai...

In an attempt to clear his name, former warlord Ibrahim Bah has been talking to Africa Confidential by telephone from a secret location. He has contradicted the government’s...

Ibrahim Bah, the warlord and arms dealer who was living in Freetown in breach of United Nations sanctions (AC Vol 54 No 10, Impunity in Freetown), has gone...

Freetown is full of talk that President Ernest Bai Koroma's closest allies are plotting to amend the constitution to scrap presidential term limits. Along with concerns about rampant...

After Africa Confidential had revealed that Ibrahima Bah, a warlord in Sierra Leone’s civil war now under United Nations’ sanctions, was living unmolested in Freetown, police arrested him...

Africa Confidential has discovered the whereabouts of one of the key financiers and middlemen who worked for the Liberian ex-President and convicted war criminal, Charles Taylor, during the...

Transcripts from the Special Court on Sierra Leone’s trial of Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor contain copious evidence about the central role of Ibrahima Bah in diamond trading and...

The Italian businessman who claims to have been cheated by Ibrahima Bah over gold deals, Vittorio Narciso Ruello, made other interesting connections through Bah in the region. In...

Last year was not the year it was meant to be for Sierra Leone’s economy. The International Monetary Fund initially predicted growth at a staggering 51.4%. As the...

Social tension has twice erupted into violence around African Minerals Limited’s Tonkolili mine. In late 2010, AML caused alarm when it started to build a dam on a...

The Anti-Corruption Commission charged 29 officials, most of them in connection with over US$1 million from the Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunisations that went missing in the...

Only several months after President Ernest Bai Koroma’s re-election are the winners and losers in the post-electoral division of spoils becoming clear. Most prominent among them is Usman...

‘Serious concerns’ about the management of funds granted by the Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunisations (GAVI) to a health programme in Sierra Leone is causing embarrassment for...

Chinese companies, both private and state-owned, are set to carve out major stakes in Sierra Leone’s economy. Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma ended a six-day trip to...

China’s Kingho Energy has big ideas for Sierra Leone, but such plans could go the way of many other ambitious investments. The US$6 billion agreement the company signed...