The Vice President of Sierra Leone Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh who is also the Board Chairman of the Millennium Challenge Coordinating Unit (MCCU) has told Ministers and other Senior Government officials that in the quest to improve on the country’s performance on the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Scorecard; Government “will leave no stone unturned on the road to compact eligibility”.
The Vice President who was accompanied by the Chief Executive Officer of MCCU, Ndeye Fatu Koroma in June 2019, visited Ministries whose roles are considered critical to the MCC Scorecard and the Sierra Leone Threshold Program (THP) Implementation.
This strategic move by the Vice President led to fruitful engagements with key Ministries such as Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health and Sanitation, Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs, Ministry of Energy, Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Lands Housing and the Environment.
In his address to Ministers and senior officials, the Vice President relayed that these visits to the Ministries were intended to send a very strong message that: 1) the Presidency takes the MCC Scorecard and the current Threshold Program implementation extremely seriously 2) there is a renewed vigour and commitment from the highest office on developing sustainable data management eco-systems and 3) a decentralized approach is essential to conveying collective responsibility to ensure that Sierra Leone passes the scorecard. He conveyed that the scorecard is a “national agenda,” and stakeholders across the spectrum should take responsibility to improve performance because it will be one of the measures of the gains that have been made under the New Direction.
The Vice President noted the pervasive challenges with data collection and storage and acknowledged that data is indispensable in the journey to promote meaningful development in Sierra Leone. To this end, he conveyed his desire to establish strategic data partnerships between the Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation, MCCU and MDAs to find workable solutions to improve data collection in Sierra Leone.
The MCCU, CEO, Ndeye Fatu Koroma explained to each of the Ministries the performance of Sierra Leone over the years on key indicators on the MCC Scorecard. She also disclosed some projected scores on the country’s performance in this year’s MCC Scorecard that will be released in November 2019. She relayed some optimism about Sierra Leone improving its performance on the scorecard that is slated to be released in November, but noted that critical to this is timely data capture and submission.
The Ministers applauded the move by the Vice President to engage them and key staff of the Ministries on the MCC Scorecard and the Threshold Program implementation. They pledged to take prompt action to ensure that Sierra Leone is selected for a Compact this year.
