Compatriots: The few who can be weaned away from rabid partisan politics; the majority who are decent citizens of Sierra Leone, wherever in the world they may be; the silent majority in cyberspace, my PLEA (‘ar dae baygh, O!!): I apologize for the intensity of my belligerent response to the propaganda rattled out with such conviction by some of our compatriots. It is my hope that Hope can be kindled in you; my hope that we can all disagree when necessary, but, we all find ways to collaborate with each other where necessary – and not wait for another’ Messiah’ to appear before we are stirred into action. About a week ago, I was at the Sierra Rutile mining site. I was taken around. I have posted photos and videos on this on my Timeline. One of the innovative things about Sierra Rutile Limited (SRL) is their veering into large scale commercial production – with their establishment of the AFRICAN LION AGRICULTURAL COMPANY. One thing which pleased me was to learn that the agricultural company is cultivating pineapples which they are selling to the Felix Juice Company in Newton, close to Freetown. The juice company is located within an innovative ‘Christian (religious)’ and commercial experiment initiated by the Wesleyan Church of the United States. It is called First Step. First Step has several acres of land at Newton. It is technically a non-profit effort – but, it lends out its land, and, hopefully, it buildings (and, hopefully, its electricity and water supplies) to attract investors to come and invest in Sierra Leone; the encouragement to the investors is that they come to invest in Sierra Leone without having to worry about construction of new buildings, about electricity,, about water, about cyber connections, etc. The Felix Juice Company is the first company to be lured into the First Step premise. They have been encouraging local farmers – mainly women – to collect mangoes during the ‘mango season’, and they buy these mangoes, which they transform into mango concentrates inside their about $2million dollar factory facility, which they export in huge blue containers to Europe. Over the past year, they have moved into encouraging farmers to grow pineapples. They have to buy the pineapple stumps from Guinea. Now, the thrust of a mineral mining company like Sierra Rutile into agriculture, and their collaboration with Felix Juice Factory, is worthy of closer examination, and, later, hopefully, emulation. There are troubling questions that arise in my mind by both the First Step and African Lion Agricultural Company experiments: both First Step as a non-profit corporate entity, and Felix Juice Company as a purely commercial enterprise, have NO Sierra Leone-ownership – which, in essence, conflicts a provision in the APC government’s Local Content Policy (which insists on about 10% ownership for Sierra Leoneans of foreign companies operating in Sierra Leone). Now, my challenge, and hope, is that we all – locally and in the Diaspora - work avidly and inflexibly until we have Sierra Leonean ownership of such potentially lucrative businesses – raising local and international capital from Sierra Leonean capital. Another troubling thing about the Felix Fruit Juice Company is that OUR mangoes and pineapples are exported to Europe as concentrates. In Europe, they are diluted, and bottled; but, we don’t have any credit for the bottled products. They even export some of the concentrates to GHANA, and, the same thing happens there: there is no ‘Product of Sierra Leone’ when our mangoes and pineapples reach shop shelves. I was also told that the Felix Fruit Juice company by 2014 grow, and sell as concentrates, cashew fruit juice – which is a product in demand in Brazil. That means, that Sierra Leonean cashew fruit products could be on sale in Brazil during the World Cup. But, no one would know that they came from Sierra Leone. Can we do something about this? By the way, can we stimulate our farmers, especially our teeming unemployed youth, to grow more pineapples to meet the production capacity of the factory for more juice? Can you please link up with Sierra Leonean experts, and opinion leaders, so that we can take advantage of these emerging opportunities? M. Alieu Iscanda
Posted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 10:15:29 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015