BEAUTIFUL INDEPEDENCE MESSAGE

 SIERRA LEONE INDEPENDENCE DAY

      THE PLOT BY SL NEWS BLOG 

Today is our country's independence day. After 150 years of British colonial misrule, Sierra Leone has been officially ruled by Sierra Leoneans for 61 years....yes, I said misrule because if the British colonial masters' goals and objectives were not focused on exploitation and the extraction of our resources to build their country, our country should've had invincible foundations that not even an atomic bomb could easily destroy.

Our forebears took over Sierra Leone from the British colonial overlords after it had been massively robbed, inhabitants had been heavily exploited, and our people's brains had been firmly conditioned.

Indeed, have we considered changing Sierra Leone's name to something more locally significant and capable of directly representing the people of Sierra Leone? The origins of the country's name are murky at best. It's even possible that Pedro de Sintra never visited our nation and that this story was concocted by a clever novelist sitting someplace in Britain. Or, if the Sailor came to our country and said the words that became the name Sierra Leone, who was there to chronicle the scene, Pedro de Sintra?

If someone was recording him when he was talking about all this mountain that looked like a lion, don't you think he was definitely inebriated? How could a sober person gaze at a mountain and not see a single lion and conclude that lions reside there? If Pedro de Sintra visited this land and met some residents, did he ask them what their land's name was?

What was the name of this country before it was given the name Sierra Leone?

In any case, the aforementioned submissions are what I'd like to fully comprehend. Let us now turn our attention to the major topic.

We've read numerous accounts of the issues surrounding independence, including who were the primary decision-makers, how the decision was reached, and so on. Today, instead of repeating these stories, I'd like to focus on the errors we've made and how we might improve our country and economy.

Before we can even consider moving further, there are a number of issues that must be addressed. But, in order to save time and keep the piece from becoming too long, I'm going to leave it at that. Because I know we're too sluggish to read a long novel in Sierra Leone. I'll just concentrate on tourism and crop farming for the time being.

In most of Africa's fast-growing economies, tourism is an important source of foreign cash. Sierra Leone must encourage this industry if it is to progress. But, alas, we never manage to get it quite right. Our successive governments continue to take a conservative approach to tourism.

We put people in charge of tourism who grew up in the 1960s. They still believe that a tourist is an elderly white man wearing a humorous T-shirt with a map of Africa who is visiting Lumley, Aberdeen, or Number 2 beaches, to see chimps at Tacugama chimpanzee sanctuary, etc. 

They don't have time for local sightseeing. As the Brazilians do with the VietSamba event, which attracts over 6 million tourists, the majority of whom are locals.

It is possible that if we start holding cultural festivals in most of the country's historic sites, we'll be able to earn more money than regular tourist does. Sierra Leone's culture is more diversified than Gambia's and, most likely, Rwanda's.

But aya, We will continue to send our personnel and other senior government officials to Dubai, London, and the United States in order to promote tourism to Sierra Leone.

Let's talk about farming now. We all want food prices to be lower. In fact, I would prefer free food, which is attainable here. However, this wish may not come true anytime soon. Not unless we change our culture and manufacturing methods first.

We must progressively transition away from "colonial" cash crops, which are commonly cultivated in some parts of the country, such as Kailahun, and toward food production. Our major issue isn't money, but rather food. Have you ever observed someone with a lot of money whining about how pricey food items are? This is due to a significant reduction in our food manufacturing capability. Food production does not always have to be commercialized as some Sierra Leoneans would think, but subsistence farming, which was once widely practiced by our forefathers and provided them with sufficient food, should be revived.

When you mention agriculture, notably rice growing, many will remark that the government should help, that the government should prepare the way, and so on. All of this is true, but what government provided all of this to our people who were subsistence farmers?....CONTINUE FROM HERE!

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NGOR SAMBA CONTINUES 

Definitely none. Government's influence in farming is through it policies such as sending in agricultural change agents to educate people on the modernize agricultural practices and also providing new seed varieties that would improve productivity in a short time frame as compare to the traditional seeds. 

But looking from a broader lens, are we to blame the farmers? No. Most local farmers are just rural settlers with little or no literacy. The blame should go back to years probably since colonization. The colonial masters after dehumanizing our people to coercively work in their gardens, finally had a shift to industrialization which is the replacement of human labour with machines. The started inventing powerful machines through a means call technology but who knows if it was the blood of our ancestors that was used as a sacrifice to acquire such knowledge (just maybe). With the advent of these machines, the white man thought of a different idea which was to stop using us as goods (slave trade) and make us customers.

There came in the problem. They met our people wholely focus on producing what they consume in larger scale with no syndrome of dependency on foreign food. The soon orientated our people about the so called cash crops and how it will generate incomes for them which was adhered to by our people just like every other thing that comes from the white man. Our people started losing focus on producing their local food to producing cash crops and at the end, they will spend all the money they earn on purchasing the foreign products again.

This is a cycle that has been long built and is still in continuation. The freed us politically to govern ourselves but colonized us mentally. And unless and until we are freed from the shackles of mental slavery, no government will ever be appreciated.

Happy independence anniversary mama salone

Hope I didn't go far away from the topic 😃

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KELVIN NJALITE JOHNNY CONTINUES 

The government failed to address the demands of subsistence farmers who were heavily involved in farming. The majority of these farmers were uneducated (only 10% were educated), and they suffered greatly as a result of their decision to stay on the periphery (village) to start small farming in order to feed their children. There were numerous items that these farmers required in order to continue farming. This is why Sierra Leone is currently suffering because our government pays less attention to agriculture (subsistence farming), which is how our forebears were heavily engaged in farming and lived a nice life. 

I'll outline a few areas where the government may have aided subsistence farmers.

Governments. Once national policies of selective expansion have been developed, considered in the light of their possible international repercussions and relations, and approved, there are many different ways in which governments can encourage, or assist farmers to put them into effect. Among the means which have been used are

(i) Education and information. Informing farmers of the prospective situation, of the desirable adjustments, and of the prospective economic situation which makes those adjustments desirable.

(ii) Provision of credit. In providing credit to farmers, from private or public agencies, emphasis can be placed on selected products where expansion is most important, or conditions can be placed on the use of the credit.

(iii) Price policies. In providing price or income guarantees or supports or in offering incentive prices, emphasis can be placed on the selective expansion of the products desired.

(iv) Production requisites. Where production requisites are under the direct or indirect "control of governments, they can ensure that adequate supplies of essential requisites are available for the production of commodities selected for expansion.

But, once again, what was the government's motivation for failing to assist subsistence farmers? because when our colonial masters arrived in this nation, they diverted our parents' attention away from agriculture (subsistence farming) and toward industrialization, where inhuman behavior was already prevalent. When the colonial authorities in Sierra Leone were in charge, human labor was in short supply. But, once again, what was the government's motivation for failing to assist subsistence farmers? because when our colonial masters arrived in this nation, they diverted our parents' attention away from agriculture (subsistence farming) and toward industrialization, where inhuman behavior was already prevalent.

Our parents were very concerned with what would bring easy food to their table, and since the arrival of industrialization, all subsistence farming has ceased. There was a greater focus on the industrialization without realizing they were exploiting them.

I couldn't blame the subsistence farmers, because, as I previously stated, they were still living in rural areas and were uneducated. Since the arrival of the white males in Sierra Leone, everything has changed, and we have become more focused on them, forgetting about our own employment. Our parents toiled away with the white males who had arrived in Sierra Leone. They were struggling to feed their family on a minimal wage. I blame the GOVERNMENT  who failed to provide for subsistence farmers and those who pushed white males to forget about subsistence farming by encouraging them to play with their brains.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE MAMA SALONE 

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BANGALIE RAMADAN MANSARAY CONTINUES 

The probability is there. There is a 50% chance that with government provided loans and with high extension services subsistence farming will thrive. The proliferation of local seedlings must be the center of priority. Government can further provide mechanical support and teachings to encourage subsistence farmers.

But also, there is also the possibility that farmers will collect government loans and decide to use it otherwise, and not for agricultural purposes. This practice sometimes clogs government's efforts in the agricultural sector. From time to time, we have hard series of  stories in which farmers swindles government loans and or equipment and divert them on other projects. These individuals will sometimes go for years being missing.

But all these can be hypothetical given the poor state of agriculture in the land. And it can also be true.

But should government decide to give agriculture a big blow as education, the outcome can be obvious as food production will increasingly grow.