Most disgraceful is the fact that Sierra Leone is the poorest nation in the West African sub-region comprising of sixteen countries namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte D’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. This disgraceful position in Africa ranking and world ranking for Sierra Leone is the making of the SLPP government of Julius Maada Bio, the most corrupt and inhuman regime in Sierra Leone’s history. Maada Bio did not come to power to rule, but he came to misrule. Maada Bio did not come to power to fight poverty, but he came to power to escalate poverty. Maada Bio did not come to power to feed the people, but he came to power to make them feel hunger and starvation. (Photo: Sierra Leone under Maada Bio is on life-support).

Also, Maada Bio did not come to power to exercise democracy, but he came to power to destroy democracy. Maada Bio did not come to power to improve health, educational, socio-economic activities, but he came to destroy health centres, reverse the standard of education, and to damage the socio-economic sectors in the country. It is therefore no surprise that Sierra Leone under Maada Bio’s SLPP regime is the poorest in West Africa, the third poorest in Africa and the 13^th poorest in the world. Despite all the abundance of natural resources, the current SLPP leadership in power since April 4, 2018 is only interested in making themselves and their families and close friends stinking rich, while the majority of Sierra Leoneans are living in abject poverty, misery, hopelessness and death.

The illegal Sierra Leone President Maada Bio, because he stole the June 24, 2023 elections, has disgraced the country after taking Sierra Leone from the fastest growing economy status under the era of President Ernest Bai Koroma of the APC government to the lowest echelons of the development index. Maada Bio inherited a Sierra Leone with over 80% of the country enjoying constant electricity supply. Today, Maada Bio has reversed the once electrified capital city of Freetown into the darkest city in Africa. Maada Bio’s SLPP regime inherited in 2018 a country having safe drinking tap water but today, Sierra Leone has almost become a desert with 90% of the running tap water not in operation much to the chagrin of most of the citizenry.

Not to mention the sky-rocketing costs of basic items like the staple food rice, palm oil, cassava leaves, potato leaves, pepper, etc. All these essential commodities have become so unaffordable because of the astronomical rise in costs of purchase. Under the Koroma administration, the poorest Sierra Leone families used to have at least three meals a day. But today, a Sierra Leone family would be very lucky to have one decent meal a day. There are many families who do not even cook on daily basis, unlike in the APC government ear when President Ernest Koroma used to subsidise fuel, rice, school and university fees and so on in order to help alleviate the suffering of the people. But when Maada Bio came, he stopped the subsidisation process and instead embarked on massive corruption of state resources.

For Sierra Leone to be relegated to the bottomless pit West Africa, in Africa and World poverty ranking, it shows how the misfit and illegitimate Sierra Leone President Maada Bio has become. According to datapandas.org, Sierra Leone is the third poorest nation in Africa and 13^th poorest in the world. Hunger, starvation, diseases, lack of safe drinking water, human rights violations, mass killings, rife corruption in high place etc. are the order of the day under the Bio presidency. Bio hates the people of Sierra Leone with passion. He is corrupt to the core. During the Koroma era, you could hear Maada Bio’s SLPP supporters protesting and chanting ‘Tolongbo Nor Go Sidom Yaa, Hungry Borku oo, meaning (APC will not sit down here because there is too much hunger).

Yet, during those years, a bag of was around Le 200,000 Leones. But today, the same bag of rice is almost one million Leones, five times the cost. Maada Bio has disgraced Sierra Leone after taking the country from the fastest growing economy to the lowest echelons of the development index. For Sierra Leone to be relegated to the bottomless pit in terms of world poverty it shows how the misfit Sierra Leone President Maada Bio has plunged the country. Among all African nations, Burundi records the lowest GNI per capita at $238.4, making it the poorest country in Africa. Following closely are the Central African Republic and Sierra Leone, with a GNI per capita of $427.1 and $461.4, respectively.

Gross National Income Per Capita Africa

Top of Form, Bottom of Form

Sierra Leone is the 13^th Poorest Country in the World

The world’s poorest countries suffer from civil wars, ethnic and sectarian strife. COVID-19, soaring inflation and the war in Ukraine made their bad situations worse. The world’s poorest countries suffer from civil wars, ethnic and sectarian strife. COVID-19, soaring inflation and the war in Ukraine made their bad situations worse.

The world has enough wealth and resources to ensure that the entire human race enjoys a decent standard of living. Yet people countries like Burundi, South Sudan and the Central African Republic continue to live in desperate poverty. For other likely contenders for the undesirable title of the world’s poorest country-Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen-years of ongoing conflict make it impossible to even attempt an assessment because of the lack of reliable economic figures.

So how do we determine the poorest countries in the world? While GDP per capita is often considered the standard metric, compensating for differences in living costs and rates of inflation by using purchasing power parity (PPP) can better assess an individual’s buying power in any given country.

It is hard to pinpoint a single cause for long-term poverty. Corrupt governments can make a very rich nation into a poor one. And so can a history of exploitative colonization, weak rule of law, war and social unrest, severe climate conditions or hostile, aggressive neighbors. Weaknesses compound: A country in debt cannot afford good schools, and a poorly educated workforce will limit capacity.

Underprivileged households worldwide suffered the severest social and economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. In the world’s poorest countries with their high level of informal employment, there were no social safety nets or temporary loans to keep businesses open and workers employed. The World Bank has forecasted that in low and middle-income countries, the current generation of students could lose up to 10% of their future average annual income.

Before Covid-19, the fraction of the world’s population living in extreme poverty—meaning on less than $1.90 a day—had fallen below 10% from more than 35% in 1990. The pandemic not only halted but reversed that progress: since the onset of the health emergency to the end of 2022, when in response to the rising cost of living the International Poverty Line (IPL) was also revised to $2.15, the IMF estimated that an additional 198 million people were likely to have entered the ranks of the extremely poor.

The good news, according to a recent analysis by a group of economists at the World Bank, is that global poverty appears now to have receded to levels closer to those before the pandemic. The bad news is not just that around 700 million people around the world still live on less than $2.15 per day, but that we have lost three years in the fight against poverty. Further, nearly 50% of the world’s population live under the upper-middle income poverty line of $6.85 a day: this means that it takes more money to be considered poor in a richer country. Most importantly, the recovery has been uneven: “While extreme poverty in middle-income countries has decreased, poverty in the poorest countries and countries affected by fragility, conflict or violence is still worse than before the pandemic.”

World’s Poorest Countries 2024

Source: International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook October 2023. The list above of the poorest countries in the world measures 97 countries by GDP and PPP and ranks them from poorest to richest. These values are expressed in current international dollars, reflecting the corresponding exchange rates and PPP adjustments.