It breaks my heart when I see how hunger has taken a hold of my beautiful country.
What is even worse is the fatalism I see around me whenever I’m in Sierra Leone, an acceptance that it will always be this way.
But it doesn’t need to be. The Sierra Leonan spirit is up to the challenge of transforming our country so that our children needn’t go to their beds hungry at night. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
That sorrow that I felt for the plight of millions has been transformed into optimism. Because the work that needs to be done to change things for the better has already begun. I’ve been spending a lot of time developing my idea of agric-educational farms. All this means is that as well as growing the crops we need, we also bring in expertise to teach our people new ways of making agriculture work for the population.
There have been so many innovations in agriculture over the years, but somehow Sierra Leone hasn’t fully benefited from them. And we see all around us the misery that lack of food security has caused.
But if we can harness outside expertise, and if our own farmers are willing to learn new techniques and new technologies, we can start to transform our entire country.
It doesn’t have to be this way forever. Let’s imagine better.
