Sierra Leoneans and others who stand to benefit from the job opportunities and entrepreneurship ventures that will result from the deal with ARISE IIP are calling on the Parliament and Government of Sierra Leone (GOSL) to ratify the trade agreement between it and the integrated industrial platform operator that has done wonders in Benin, Gabon, Togo and others.
The highly motivated citizens said they believe that the agreement between the government of Sierra Leone and ARISE is the best deal yet in a very long time that is definitely going to change and sustain this country in the long run.
With the nation standing to benefit from the manufacturing of raw materials into finished products, the country will benefit from the foreign exchange businesses will make to boost the country’s forex and tax revenue bases. For the first time in the nation’s history she stands the chance of exporting finished goods to the US, Europe and Asia in a sustainable way. The industrialisation of Sierra Leone has been long in the making after different regimes promised to make the nation a sub regional industrial hub. The deal between ARISE IIP and the government of Sierra Leone makes this more of a reality than a pipe dream.
Our young people who are interested in various fields such as arts and craft, fashion and textile, the manufacturing and packaging of juice and vegetable products, timber and other ventures said for the nation to appreciate the scale and level of industrialisation that is about to take place in Sierra Leone, the journalists and other media personalities that were taken on a recent fact finding trip to Gabon and Benin should be honest about what they saw and clear the air on the media stories circulating against the deal between government and ARISE.
Encouraged by the TV coverage by AYV and other media houses from Gabon and Benin on the massive job opportunities that have transformed the lives and communities in both countries, the young Sierra Leonean entrepreneurs said the ARISE should be ratified if they are to take government or Parliament serious.
The fact of the matter is that Sierra Leone needs jobs. The kinds of job opportunities mining companies bring to a nation are limited to mainly people with geology or mining related experiences, which resource rich nations seem to lack. For this reason we have a lot of expats working for mining concerns across the world.
But with the ARISE IIP deal, the nation’s raw materials are going to be used to create jobs for locals by the many downstream business opportunities that are bound to come up to fabricate many of our agricultural produce for the local and international markets. While mining concerns take raw materials out of the country to get them manipulated and repackaged to be resold to us at exorbitant prices, with the ARISE deal we finish the products here thereby making them cheaper on the market and good as export revenue earners for the people and government of Sierra Leone.
ARISE IIP should not be caught up in the media war going on between supporters of one business entity over the other. While it is good for the nation to get the story from both sides on ARISE, the vitriol that makes it a bit too personal for comfort should be expunged from our public space. They are too negative for the kind of work the nation is expecting to benefit from a business venture between the government of Sierra Leone and ARISE IIP.
At present the young people of Sierra Leone are in desperate need of work opportunities. Our young people are graduating in droves only to leave school looking for work. Many of them have sound business ideas of the type that will see them gainfully employed; not only them, but their fellow young people they will hire to get the job done.
The country needs this deal with ARISE IIP. This deal is not about politics or a political regime; it is one for all governments of Sierra Leone, starting from now. This business deal is for the collective future of our present young people and those who will come after them. The agreement between the government and ARISE is for the future of the nation. Sierra Leone will be on a definite path to industrialisation, something successive governments had promised but failed to deliver.
Therefore the politics of bad heart and misleading media stories bent on confusing and derailing the process to get the deal ratified by Parliament should not be entertained or tolerated. Based on what our journalists saw while they were in Gabon and Benin, if those levels of industrialisation can be attained and the number of jobs and businesses created in Sierra Leone, then real skills development would have started in Sierra Leone. The government of the day can appreciate when we say human capital development would have also taken a shot in the arm with the ratified deal between ARISE and the GOSL.
While we would want to focus on job creation for the nation’s youth, the deal with ARISE also stands to benefit the existing rail and port infrastructure, to the level where we could see the need for increased rail and port services resulting to more port and rail facilities being built to cater to our level of development and industrialisation.
The young entrepreneurs and college graduates said for a long time the nation’s seacoast has not been blessed with reliable sea transport that would lessen the burden on our limited road infrastructure. An industrialised society will see need to improve on all roads, including the sea lanes.
Therefore, we should be encouraging not discouraging companies like ARISE IIP to come and set up shop in Sierra Leone. This nation is not in the position to pick and choose investors as investors are not lining up to come and establish here. As a matter of fact businesses are closing down, people are losing jobs and the government is losing much needed revenue.
It is time for Sierra Leone to ARISE and industrialise, or it will always be at the bottom of the totem pole of the world’s industrialised nations.