Sierra Leone has missed out on a whooping USD 600 million-dollar MCC grant from this year’s 2020 MCC grant, even after passing eleven out of twenty indicators.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation has announced in its quarterly meeting on December 9, 2019 that the Board of Directors of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has selected Mozambique for a new compact program to reduce poverty through targeted investments that increase economic growth.
The Board has also, according to the MCC, selected Kenya for an MCC threshold program, the agency’s smaller grant program that focuses on policy and institutional reform.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation provides time-limited grants to developing countries that meet rigorous standards for good governance, from fighting corruption to respecting democratic rights as evaluated by MCC’s scorecard.
“I am pleased to announce MCC’s new compact partnership with Mozambique and new threshold partnership with Kenya,” MCC Chief Executive Officer, Sean Cairncross said.
“MCC works around the world to reduce poverty through economic growth, consolidating democratic and free market reforms, and enabling public and private sector collaboration to create jobs, sustainable growth and better economic opportunities within our partner countries.”
Mozambique successfully completed its first MCC compact in September 2013 and has recently demonstrated encouraging policy improvement on the scorecard.
A new compact would build on the country’s continued commitment to sector reform and MCC’s strong relationship with the country.
The selection of Kenya for a threshold program will give MCC the opportunity to engage with the country on its path towards policy and institutional reform.
Kenya is an important partner to the United States in East Africa where MCC’s presence is growing.
As part of their annual selection process, MCC’s Board of Directors re-selected Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Lesotho, Malawi, Timor-Leste and Tunisia to continue developing bilateral compacts.
The Board also re-selected Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Niger as eligible for concurrent compact programs for regional integration.
This allows MCC to continue working with these countries to determine if there are potential regional programs that meet MCC’s strict investment criteria that could be supported through concurrent compacts.
The Board also re-selected Ethiopia and Solomon Islands to continue developing threshold programs. The Board re-affirmed its commitment to developing a compact with Kosovo.
Sierra Leone crucially failed in fiscal discipline, political rights, access to credits, child health and many others while doing well in the fight against corruption, trade policy, government effectiveness and many more.
The country’s Vice President, Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh returned quite recently from the MCC headquarters in the US where he had gone to negotiate the MCC compact but the sudden announcement of other African countries of having benefited and in another case respect for the grant was disappointing news for the government.
The country has woefully missed out on a whooping USD600 million which should have supported the delivery and strengthening of basic social services in a country where the delivery of such services is in a very deplorable state.