NaCSA Sierra Leone Gets 20M Euro to Change Lives

By John Marrah – 6^th August 2019

On Friday 2^nd August 2019, at Charlotte Street in Freetown, the NACSA Commissioner, Abubakarr Kokofele stated that his institution is working on a project to help communities develop their lives.

He added that the project is set to construct community markets, roads, health centers, water wells etc. through the Ministry of Development and that NACSA is also working with local authorities like the district councils in various communities across the country.

“We want to make chiefdom headquarter towns attractive so that people don’t move from place to place for developmental activities. We will also engage market women and establish micro credit so as to ease financial stress” he said

He added that the Islamic Development Bank is strongly supporting this project and different stakeholders and ministries are going to be engaged so as to ease the burden.

The Deputy Commissioner, Isata Max Kyne, stated that NACSA strongly depends on stakeholders for continuous development in the country and that they are very grateful so far for their support, adding that this project is also co-founded by the government of Sierra Leone. She furthered that this timely engagement meeting was called to get all the different stakeholders to put all hands on deck for a better Sierra Leone.

“We have benefited so much over the years through collaborations, we also call on you all as critical stakeholders for action implementation in different locations in the country so that we will avoid duplications and more coordination” she said.

She said that the GPC 1 and 2 attracted so much donor funds and that the GPC 1 which was implemented from 2006 to 2014 attracted donor funds of 11 million euro in addition to government counterpart funding, and the GPC 2 which was from 2014 to 2018 attracted donor funds of 12.3 million euro and also with government counterpart funding. She added that this GPC 3 will start in 2019 and roll on to 2023 and that has attracted donor funding of 20 million euro plus, and the agreement was signed in January by the finance minister and the German government. She ended by saying that the whole essence of the GPC program is to maintain peace so that communities will be at peace with basic facilities in different communities.

The Programs Manager GPC Project, Salifu Mansaray said that they have worked with Falaba and communities closer to Falaba to construct roads to connect communities and they did it in connection with the community stakeholders. He added that the roads were roughly estimated for 11 billion Leones.

“We are also working on the employment scheme for youths in these different communities both during the construction and after the construction in Falaba and its different communities. Also NACSA has presented the budget and the maps showing the different communities to the bank and we are waiting for their immediate response after which the project will kick off in January 2020” he said.

He ended that Koinadugu to Sansangbala will also be included and other different communities so as to ease economic relationship among the different communities around that end and they are happy that all other stakeholders have signed to the necessary documents.