Fatima Maada Bio, the first lady of Sierra Leone is an outspoken personality who often touches on issues affecting her country and the continent. The former actress and screenwriter is a Gambian-Sierra Leonean who advocates for women, girls and gender equality.
However, in a recent interview with the Harvard University Center of African Studies, Fat Fatima delves into political and economic issues affecting her country and in the continent post-independent. She pointed fingers on foreign countries and companies for the predicament the continent is experiencing since independence.
This extract from her speech highlight some of the challenges African countries face when trying to break free off the claws of global capitalism:
“The kind of mineral resources we have in our country is enough to take care of everybody in that country. We should not have a single poor person in Sierra Leone, but unfortunately we are not given the free will to make decisions on our own mineral resources.
“There’s always Big Brother who decides and when you fight and say no, we are not going to do this, they use the system to stop you.
It’s either they set you up with the opposition and they will be supporting the opposition against you from the back, or they cause unnecessary chaos in your country so that you are not able to even govern your own people.” The First Lady revealed
She further stated that those powers “ will do things to make you not be functionable. And of course, any country that doesn’t have peace cannot develop. You have to have peace before you talk about development, I’ll give you a simple example about Sierra Leone.
“Every mining company that is in Sierra Leone today is owned by a foreigner. Every mining company, if it’s not the Chinese, it’s the American, it’s the British.
“Our electricity Bumuna is run by the British and we still don’t have light. We’re looking for light – electricity. If you don’t have electricity how can you talk about education? How can you talk about health facilities? How can you talk about improving the infrastructure of your country? We don’t have electricity. Now do we actually even have proper water? Pipe borne water so that our kids will not be sick.
“We don’t have those facilities. Why? with all the minerals we have, there is a cap you put (in place). Before my husband became the president of Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone was benefiting – they said what’s the word, 0.0001%. What is that?
“Basically, a company can take as much as $100 million dollars out of the country in terms of minerals and then they can just give the country $10,000. Now, what will $10,000 do for our health system? What will $10,000 do for our educational system? And these are the things I believe that are stopping Africa from progressing. We don’t have a say.
The sense about us celebrating independence, I don’t know why we’re celebrating independence, because we are not free.”
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