WHY SIERRA LEONE’S HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT IS A HOUSE WITHOUT A FOUNDATION

By Samuel Wise Bangura

In the high-stakes theater of Sierra Leonean politics, few performances have been as grand or as hollow as the "Big Five Game Changer" agenda. At its center lies a glittering promise: the creation of 500,000 jobs for a nation gasping for economic air. But as we cross into 2026, the rhetoric of "Human Capital Development" is beginning to feel less like a roadmap and more like a cruel mirage. President Julius Maada Bio’s administration has spent years trumpeting its commitment to education. We see the colorful billboards; we hear the international accolades in Davos. Yet, for the average Sierra Leonean youth, the reality is a stark, shivering contrast. We are witnessing a systemic betrayal where the government builds schools but forgets the economy, and awards degrees but ignores the market.

When the "Big Five Game Changers" were unveiled, one of the centre-pieces was a promise so bold it seemed to answer a nation's deepest anxiety: 500,000 new jobs. For a country where 70% of recent university graduates are still unemployed years after leaving campus, this was the hope desperately needed. Yet, as we stand today, that promise has evaporated into a cloud of vague progress reports and deflected responsibility. The harsh reality is that the government's trumpeted human capital development agenda appears to be a spectacular failure, leaving millions of young Sierra Leoneans in a state of idle despair. This is not just a policy shortfall; it is a betrayal of a generation.

The government’s own figures tell a story of significant underachievement. The Minister of Employment, Labour and Social Security, my brother and friend Mohamed Rahman Swaray recently admitted that only 147,343 jobs had been created between 2023 and 2024. Though not verified in the absence of a breakdown of data, this is less than 30% of the promised half-million, a gap so wide it reveals the promise as mere political theatre. To put this failure in context, the World Bank estimates Sierra Leone needs to create at least 75,000 new jobs every year just to keep pace with its growing labour force. We are not even treading water; we are sinking.

The official unemployment rate, a paltry 3.1%, is a statistical illusion that masks the true crisis. The real Sierra Leonean economy is one of survivalist informality and underemployment. A staggering 86% of total employment is in the informal sector, contributing only 37.6% to the GDP, a clear sign of low productivity and wasted potential. Furthermore, 88% of the workforce is trapped in low-productivity employment or self-employment, with 55% being unskilled and unemployed youth. These are the people the "Game Changers" were meant to rescue. They are still waiting.

The government's failure in job creation is inextricably linked to its failure in education. Our universities and colleges remain factories of irrelevance, churning out graduates with theoretical knowledge but no practical, market-ready skills. As the World Bank notes, there is a chronic shortage of skills across almost every sector, from hospitality to construction. The system is supply-driven, with little input from employers, producing graduates who are unemployable in a 21st-century economy.

"Human Capital Development" cannot be a slogan. It must be a radical overhaul that pivots our entire education model towards functional, demand-led skills training. We must massively expand and modernise Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), tying curricula directly to the needs of industry, as initiatives like the Skills Development Fund have begun to do. Every graduate should leave with a certificate in one hand and a demonstrable, marketable skill in the other. Criticism alone is not enough. We must propose a concrete, two-part solution that taps into our greatest unused resource: the skilled but informal workforce that is the carpenters, tailors, mechanics, electricians, and builders who keep daily life moving.

First, launch a national Skills Formalisation and Cooperative Programme. Using the existing policy framework on formalisation, the government must proactively organise these skilled individuals into registered cooperatives. The programme would provide simplified, cost-free registration, basic business management, financial literacy, and quality assurance training, access to group-based microloans and toolkits and a nationally recognised certification of their trade skill.

Second, enact a bold procurement policy that creates a guaranteed market for these cooperatives. The existing Sustainable Procurement and Supplier Development Program (SPSDP) provides a foundation. We must go further by amending the Public Procurement Act to reserve all government contracts below a specific threshold (e.g., Le 500 million) exclusively for certified Sierra Leonean skill-based cooperatives and micro-enterprises. A clear threshold would ensure that larger, often foreign-connected firms cannot bid for these smaller but vital contracts. This policy would create immediate, dignified work for hundreds of thousands, inject public funds directly into local communities, build a track record for these cooperatives, enabling them to grow and formally recognise and value the skills that have always sustained the nation.

The Bio administration's 500,000-job promise is now a monument to unfulfilled potential. The continued trumpet-blowing about human capital development rings hollow when the education system remains detached from economic reality and the informal skilled majority is ignored. We do not need more vague initiatives; we need a fundamental reorientation of policy and priority. It is time to abandon the mirage and build on the solid ground of our people's inherent ingenuity. Let us overhaul education to deliver true function. Let us formalise, organise, and empower the skilled informal sector. And let us use the government's own purchasing power to fuel this engine of grassroots job creation. The alternative is more years of broken promises, and a generation lost to frustration and despair. The choice is stark, and the time to act is now.

President Bio’s 2026 "Year of Action" cannot be more of the same. Human Capital Development is a failure if it only produces "highly educated" beggars. We need a system that values function over formality. The government must stop hiding behind vague promises of "thousands of jobs" and start building the institutional architecture to create them. If they fail to overhaul the education sector and empower the informal backbone of this country, the "Big Five" will go down in history not as a game-changer, but as the ultimate political bluff.