Sesay Says Sierra Leone’s Institutional Weakness Is Holding Back Its Talent

Oumar Farouk Sesay has argued that Sierra Leone’s longstanding development difficulties are rooted less in a lack of capable people than in institutions and incentives that fail to make effective use of their abilities.

Writing in The Sierra Leone Telegraph on 5 October 2026, Sesay said the country has produced highly accomplished citizens but has struggled to build systems capable of extending their individual achievements into broad national progress.

“Sierra Leone has never lacked brilliant people. Our deeper failure has been our inability to build institutions that can multiply that brilliance,” he wrote.

Talent beyond Sierra Leone

The article points to Sierra Leoneans who have distinguished themselves internationally in universities, medicine, diplomacy, engineering, literature, international organisations and other professions. It also highlights Dr Davidson Nicol, described in the article’s caption as the first black African elected as a Fellow of a Cambridge college. Nicol is identified as a physician, diplomat and writer.

Sesay’s argument is that individual distinction is not enough to produce national development. He compares a country to a football team or orchestra, where the combined result depends on coordination rather than simply gathering talented individuals.

He also refers to E. O. Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth, including its discussion of competition among individuals within groups and cooperation between groups. In the Sierra Leonean context, the article identifies families, communities, religious institutions, osusu groups, hometown associations and diaspora organisations as examples of cooperation.

Trust and institutional incentives

Sesay distinguishes tolerance from trust, arguing that the ability of people to live alongside those from different ethnic or political backgrounds does not necessarily mean they trust institutions or one another across those boundaries.

Citing recent Afrobarometer findings, he says Sierra Leoneans show high tolerance towards people from other ethnic and political groups, while trust across some of those divisions is weaker. The article does not provide the survey’s date, methodology, sample size or detailed figures.

According to Sesay, the central institutional question is whether public systems reward commitment to the national interest as strongly as they reward narrower loyalties, including political allegiance, ethnicity, family, region or friendship.

“Our problem may be less that Sierra Leoneans cannot cooperate than that too many of our institutions reward narrower loyalties more generously than they reward commitment to the larger national good,” he wrote.

The article argues that judicial independence, merit-based recruitment and predictable fairness are necessary if citizens are to trust institutions even when those institutions do not favour them or their groups. It also warns that politicisation, patronage and frustration can waste professional ability, with some talented people leaving or becoming silent.

Institutions that endure

Sesay maintains that Sierra Leone should not depend on exceptional individuals to preserve ordinary standards of honesty and competence. “A republic should not demand heroism for routine competence or exceptional courage for ordinary honesty,” he wrote.

He argues that natural resources, including diamonds, gold, rutile, bauxite, iron ore, fertile land and fisheries, cannot by themselves guarantee prosperity. In his view, institutions determine whether such advantages produce wider benefits.

The article calls for stronger civic loyalty, institutional independence, dependable fairness and incentives that connect personal ambition with the public good. It also says Sierra Leoneans should be able to serve their country without needing the right family, region, political party or patron.

Sesay concludes that changing governments alone will not resolve the country’s institutional problems. Governments are expected to change in a democracy, he argues, while national institutions must endure. “Governments are temporary. Citizenship is permanent,” he wrote.

He presents the situation as a matter of institutional design rather than inevitability: “It is not fate. It is design. And what has been badly designed can be redesigned.”