Sierra Leone's Medium-Term National Development Plan. 2019-2023. Volume 1

This Medium-term National Development Plan represents a collection of the various components of the Sierra Leone’s development agenda and reflects the country’s determination and commitment to transform itself into a stable and prosperous economy and to promote sustainable development for the welfare of all its citizens. The Plan is based on education, as the government’s flagship programme to provide a solid base to enhance human capital development and to facilitate the transformation of the economy. The Plan is organised and subdivided around eight Policy clusters and several sub-clusters: 1) Human capital development, including optimal poverty reduction, ensuring free quality basic and senior secondary education and strengthening tertiary education; accelerating health-care delivery; enhancing environmental sanitation and hygiene; increasing social protection; and advancing housing and land management. 2) Diversifying the economy and promoting growth, including improving productivity and commercialisation of the agricultural sector; improving productivity and sustainable management of fisheries and the marine sector; revitalising the tourism sector and the manufacturing and services sector; improving the management of oil and gas exploration and production and of mineral resources; promoting an inclusive rural economy. 3) Infrastructure and economic competitiveness, including: improving the water infrastructure systems; accelerating the provision of energy supplies. 4) Governance and accountability for results, including fighting corruption and illicit financial flows; advancing political development for national cohesion; strengthening public financial management. 5) Empowering women, children, adolescents, and persons with disability. 6) Youth employment, sports and migration. 7) Addressing vulnerabilities and building resilience, including: management of the environment and natural resources and strengthening disaster early warning; strengthening forest management and wetland conservation. 8) Means of implementation.
Concerning agriculture sector, the Plan focuses on factors affecting the productivity, including: low use of necessary inputs such as fertilisers, limitation of large-scale irrigation and mechanised farms; poor access to markets due to inadequate market information; limited access to affordable agricultural finance. The strategic objectives to improve performance in the sector concern: food security improvement; animal health for production of healthy livestock products; implementation of credit facilities and guarantees; sustainable investment promotion; agricultural research empowerment; strengthening seed production; cooperative and family farming improvement to promote integration into agricultural value chains; organic farming promotion to minimise biodiversity loss. Concerning fisheries, the Plan focuses on: public-private partnership to construct a fish-harbour complex; public procurement; fish stock assessment; proper fishing nets distribution; creation of a food safety authority to certificate seafood using international standards; improvement of sustainable aquaculture practices and industrial processing of marine products; protection of marine and coastal ecosystems; harvesting regulation, by ending overfishing and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and stopping destructive fishing practices. Concerning other relevant sectors, the Plan provides for: access to safe drinking water; water source and water supply improvement; waste management; solid waste disposal system; improvement of recycling activity; innovative conversion of waste to energy; environmental protection; management of toxic chemicals and hazardous substances; land degradation control and pollution minimisation; progressive amendment of regulations on ozone-depleting substances; increase the proportion of terrestrial and marine areas protected; biodiversity and endangered species protection; reduce the country’s vulnerability to natural disasters; forest and wetland management improvement; forest reserves maintenance; sustainable use of timber and fuelwood.