Editorial

Sierra Leone: Who Wants to Interview Sama Banya?

This article was first published on 18 April 2005 during the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) administration of Tejan Kabbah. By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah I read with amusement last Thursday Dr. Sama Banya’s statement that he has placed me and Concord Times  in his “will not grant interview list.” Dr. Banya says he has […]

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Milele Energy: A Tragic Albatross to American Diplomacy in Sierra Leone

By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, PhD Staggering revelations have emerged in London showing efforts by Milele Energy and its corporate financiers to cover-up an ongoing investigation into the company’s corrupt acquisition of an energy contract in Sierra Leone. New corporate records from the United Kingdom’s Registrar of Companies obtained by the Africanist Press reveal that

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Failure of Diplomatic Propaganda: the United States Electricity Debt and Deception in Sierra Leone

By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, PhD This weekend, Sierra Leonean politicians and a few foreign diplomats have been repeating an already exhausted propaganda message they have sold to Sierra Leoneans for five years now. On Friday September 27, United States corporate representatives and diplomats announced that the United States Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has signed

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Death of Sierra Leone’s Sheikh Umarr Khan: Unanswered Questions

Those who worked with Khan, including infectious disease experts in universities across the United States and Europe, had since moved on to lucrative academic and professional careers, receiving more grants and awards. In Sierra Leone, both Khan and the Ebola disease that killed him are now distant memory; they form part of the collective public trauma that Sierra Leoneans have experienced in the last two decades and unwillingly learned to forget. 

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Sherbro Alliance and Idris Elba’s Dream City in Sierra Leone

By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah Few months ago, the British media enthusiastically reported that “Idris Elba has shared details of his dream to turn an island off the coast of Sierra Leone, the country where his father was born, into an environmentally friendly smart city.“ The Guardian took the lead in the enthusiasm that surrounded

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New Bar Association Leadership: A Revenge of Dictatorship in Sierra Leone

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article was first published by the Africanist Press on 7 June, 2016 following the controversial 2016 Sierra Leone Bar Association’s executive elections. The article was republished by several newspapers in Freetown, including The Independent Observer, and Global Times. We republish it today to underline that the current crisis of the Sierra

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History and the Future of Sierra Leone

By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah Five Sierra Leoneans have received doctorate degrees from Northwestern University since the mid-1960s. They include Enid Forde (1966, Geography), Josephus Olufemi Richards (1970, Art History), Gladys Harding (1971, Education), Augustine Stevens (1975, Political Science) and Cecil Magbaily Fyle (1976, History). I am the sixth doctoral graduate and the second historian

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Sierra Leone: Democracy Must Not Be a Rotational Façade of the Elite

By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah It is now clear to all those who have been watching developments in West Africa that the June 2023 elections in Sierra Leone have turned out to be the biggest tragedy in African elections. And the embarrassment is not felt by Sierra Leone’s elite alone, but the shame is equally

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Dangers of Endorsing or Participating in an Illegitimate Regime

By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah At this point, we are all in agreement that the elections in Sierra Leone lacked transparency; which is a key criterion for any democratic election. We also must make it known that any government that is the result of a non-transparent election is one that holds a stolen mandate. In

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Africanist Press: Two Decades Promoting Democracy and Resisting Corruption in Africa

By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah This year – 2022 – marks 20 years since the launch of the Africanist Press as an independent media organization providing a platform for free speech, democracy, and accountable leadership in Africa. Africanist Press journalists have campaigned against corruption and graft across three successive regimes in Sierra Leone. As editor,

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