I read an article today and e shock me #TheAminataDeal 🤬
It’s about a proposed concession to a foreign-owned oil company that gives them preferential treatment over everyone else in our energy sector. It makes me ask: Why?
The article highlights an unfair deal the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI) wants to make with Aminata & Sons (SL) Ltd, which was tabled in front of Parliament.
While this deal is being pushed as a necessary fix for the global oil crisis, it is a devastatingly bad deal for #SierraLeone for three reasons:
1. The Aminata Deal Starves the National Budget🇸🇱
By allowing a 3-year deferral on petroleum import taxes, the deal directly deprives our national budget of the cash needed today for essential public services like healthcare, education, and infrastructure.
How is this in the best interest of Sierra Leoneans? How does this help the NRA meet its revenue targets?
2. The Aminata Deal Suffocates Sierra Leonean Local Industry
The state-subsidized 5% interest rate and tax holiday create an uneven playing field, triggering a severe cash-flow crisis for NP who are forced to pay standard commercial rates and upfront taxes.
Why is it in the government’s best interest to paralyze our own? Why is the success of Aminata (a foreign-owned company) more important to MoTI than companies built by Sierra Leoneans? When did it become the mandate of MoTI to act as an agent for foreign entities against local ones?
3. The Aminata Deal is the Death of Local Content
This heavy-handed intervention actively violates established "Local Content Policies," sending a chilling message to local business leaders and Sierra Leonean dreamers like me. The message is clear: local investments will be deprioritized the moment a foreign entity secures backroom fiscal favors.
The good news?
Parliament has reportedly sent the concession back because it lacked the proper final signatures from the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Finance.
As we head to the Sierra Leone Diaspora Investment Conference, I am calling on all well-meaning Sierra Leoneans to encourage MoTI leadership to reconsiderthis Aminata deal.
Let’s embrace the mantra we always preach—put Salone fos—by prioritizing and championing Sierra Leonean-owned businesses.
Please share this till it reaches our friends at MoTI 🙏🏾
You cannot think freely in someone else’s language.
Every nation that industrialized fast Japan, China, South Korea taught science, law, and governance in its own language.
Africa still graduates engineers who can’t explain their work to their own grandmothers.
"As a kid growing up in #SierraLeone, I spent my days catching snakes in the forest and fishing in the creeks near our home. Nobody had to teach me to love nature. It was just there – immediate, alive and astonishing.
That feeling has never left me. It's why I became a scientist. Why I make documentary films. Why I've spent three decades trying to get governments, companies, and communities to move faster on conservation and climate.
And it's why I'm joining The New York Climate Exchange as CEO.
The Exchange is building something genuinely awesome - a world-class climate campus on Governors Island, designed to develop and scale solutions for cities and communities everywhere. There’s real power here – with science, civic energy, and the private sector in the same place, all pointed at the same problem.
I believe the solutions exist, and that the work now is about moving them faster and further."
It’s a pinch me moment. Getting to actually build, for perhaps the most important purpose of our time. That's the job. I can't wait to start. Officially being in June!
https://t.co/b8TzTwBbXJ
Do not rush out of the slippery bathroom to pick your calls. Cultivate the habit of calling back when you are done instead. Airtime is far cheaper than brain surgery.
@toubuya Not even sure where to start because nothing seems to change in that country
Governance is not for everyone irrespective of feeling entitled
In the past 30yrs that country has witnessed deterioration & decay
All in the hands of a few pretending to know what governance is about
If there’s one thing I should say is that there are Sierra Leoneans who hate Sierra Leone. You can’t hypocritically claim you love the country and silently wish for it to never develop or grow into a prosperous nation. Same way some people hate their friends.
Beware!
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