Life on 70 cents a day

IN THE main square of Makeni, a couple of hours' drive into the jungle from Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, young men sit around on their motorbikes, chatting, joking and swapping cigarettes. These are the town's taxi-drivers—okada riders, in the local patois—waiting for a fare. It looks like a scene from anywhere in Africa. But these are no ordinary taxi drivers; most are former fighters from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), once one of Africa's most feared and barbarous rebel outfits.

Just seven or so years ago some of them, often only in their early teens or younger, usually drugged-up or drunk, would have been committing the cruellest acts against their fellow citizens ever witnessed in the continent. The RUF specialised in cutting off the hands of their opponents for what they regarded as the smallest affront, such as voting the wrong way in an election. Today, some of those victims, their stumps hanging uselessly and conspicuously by their sides, wander along on the opposite side of the street from their former tormentors.

But the fact that the taxi-driving “former combatants”, as the authorities call them, have their own jobs and thus a stake in the local economy is seen as a huge step forward in Sierra Leone. It should keep them out of trouble, so the theory goes, and stop them from returning to their old ways. There are about 450 okada riders in Makeni alone. It is a tangible sign, according to the foreign donors who paid for their training, that after a civil war that devastated the country from 1991 to 2002, Sierra Leone is moving forward again.

If only it were that simple. Demobilisation has gone fairly well. Sierra Leone is a less violent place than it has been for a long time; by and large, the rule of law prevails. A special court set up to try the okadas' former commanders, directly responsible for ordering much of the mayhem, is winding down; some are going to jail. Moreover, the country has had two peaceful elections in a region not famed for democracy. Yet in many ways, despite the relative peace, Sierra Leone's problems remain as intractable as ever, leaving those responsible for keeping the country on life-support wondering what to do next.

For, despite the progress, Sierra Leone remains, according to most evaluations, one of the poorest places on earth. It has just earned, once again, the distinction of being the world's least developed country (for where statistics are available), according to the United Nations Development Programme's annual survey. Aid workers reel off the wearily familiar statistics: maternal mortality rates are the world's highest; so are mortality rates for the under-fives; life expectancy is only a touch over 40; probably two-thirds of women are illiterate; over 70% of Sierra Leonians get by on less than 70 American cents a day. Moreover, few trends are moving fast the right way. The best improvement is in primary school enrolment but completion rates are much lower; few go on to secondary school, and no more than about 5% of these go on to higher education.

Since a peace deal in 2002, foreign donors, led by Britain, the former colonial master, have been giving generously. But so far they have merely staved off a collapse. The roots of conflict—chronic poverty, youth disenchantment and huge regional disparities—still go deep. Until they are tackled, Sierra Leone will remain a fragile state at best.

Above all, it needs jobs. Probably less than a quarter of adults have “formal employment”, loosely defined; the okada drivers are the lucky ones. With no regular income, the mass of bored, listless youths will be tempted to join the gangs and rebel armies that used to fight for the control of the country's extensive diamond fields, mainly in the south-east. Giorgio Biguzzi, the Catholic bishop of Makeni, who helped to set up many of the best post-war peace and reconciliation programmes, says “the real healing is to provide people with opportunities”.

But where will the jobs come from? Before the war, Sierra Leone had more than 30 factories or processing plants. Now it has four: brewing, bottling and making concrete. With its fertile soil, agriculture should do well. But in ten years of civil war many of its foreign markets for such products as coffee and palm oil were captured by competitors. The diamond mines provide jobs but they are well away from the main population centres. Few outsiders will invest until the country has regular electricity; at the moment, what little electricity there is usually comes from expensive diesel generators. A new dam and hydroelectric power station crawl towards completion. But these have taken more than 30 years to build, so no one is betting on them joining the grid yet.

Clean those hands

Better governance would help. Chronic corruption and incompetence in government turned many against the authorities in the civil war. Progress to improve matters is unsurprisingly patchy. The bribes do not have to be very big when a mid-ranking official takes home about $70 a month, a nurse $50. The new government, elected last year, has appointed an energetic head of the previously discredited Anti-Corruption Commission, Abdul Tejan-Cole, so there is some hope that he, along with a more general reform of the public service, will make government more honest and efficient. A new anti-corruption law has been passed, expanding his powers and increasing the number of offences from a meagre nine to a more belligerent 29.

Those who are trying to strengthen the country's institutions and economy know they are in a race against time. The region's warlords are being replaced by drug lords, many from Colombia. Circling like vultures around weak states, they are starting to use Sierra Leone as a base to ship drugs on to Europe and beyond, with all the corruption and violence that will come with it. A country like Guinea-Bissau, just up the coast, has already fallen prey; it is now almost a “narco-state”. There was alarm earlier this year when an aircraft carrying almost 700kg (more than half a ton) of cocaine was caught at Freetown's airport. Nineteen people, including customs officials, were arrested, and the minister for transport is still suspended. In a desperately poor country such as Sierra Leone, drug money will quickly gnaw its way through the legislature and bureaucracy. Long, porous borders with Guinea, an equally fragile neighbour, add to the concerns.

Originally a pioneering colony of freed British slaves, Sierra Leone has as much right as Philadelphia or Paris to be thought of as a cradle of modern liberty. Here, in the 1790s, blacks voted for the first time in elections, as did women. Yet today their descendants still face a daily struggle for survival, let alone liberty.