Women in Sierra Leone are gaining business acumen and entrepreneurial skills. Photo: UNIFEM.

In Sierra Leone, an NGO sponsors a business plan contest that strives to change the gender makeup of the country’s entrepreneurs.

The African Foundation for Development in Sierra Leone (AFFORD-SL) creates jobs for underrepresented individuals and offers coaching and mentoring services. Despite Parliament's current review of a 30 percent quota for women to assume positions in government and leadership roles, women are largely marginalized in society. Most rural women don’t work outside the home unless it’s in agriculture, and those that do are subject to the largesse of their husbands and other males.

But AFFORD-SL, along with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Department for International Development, seeks to improve their status through a competition called Business Bomba.

Entrants from four regions in Sierra Leone—Freetown, Makeni, Bo and Kanema—pitch business plans to NGO representatives and independent business advisors. The rigorous four-phase competition includes workshops, training and mentoring. Twenty-two finalists are selected with 12 winners representing five categories, one of which is open only to women. Each finalist must pitch a business plan to the panel of judges—a daunting task to many, as a large percentage of the population isn’t college-educated. The top winners in each category receive $23,000 to help jumpstart his or her business. Former winner Eva Roberts developed Morvigor Tea, a homegrown variety that is now available throughout the capital, Freetown.

AFFORD's contests are a low-cost way to shine light on those innovative, effective small business ideas, one Eva Roberts at a time.

U.N Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon says green energy is central to economic growth. Photo: United Nations Information Service - Geneva(flickr)

What can the world’s poorest hope to achieve without energy access? Not much, according to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

“Energy is central to everything we do – from powering our economies to...combating climate change to underpinning global security," Ki-Moon said at the recent World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. "It is the golden thread that connects economic growth, increased social equity and preserving the environment.”

And that’s the point of a new initiative launched by the Secretary General to coordinate “the efforts of governments, finance, business and civil society towards achieving the goal of ‘Sustainable Energy for All’ by 2030.”

Dr. Kandeh Yumkella of Sierra Leone was selected by Ki-Moon to co-lead the initiative’s task force. In this video, he discusses the 'Sustainable Energy for All' project. His words on the role of the private sector in expanding energy access and boosting economic opportunity start at 3:30, but the whole video highlights a promising initiative.

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Within a few years, cheap sorghum-based beer might be the newest gift of the Nile to drinkers and farmers alike. Photo: Tattooed JJ (Flickr)

With barley beer priced out of reach and homebrewed banana beer sending people to the hospital, SABMiller is testing a new ingredient for its African alcohol: sorghum.

The giant global beermaker and its subsidiary, Nile Breweries, see an opportunity to expand their business while potentially halving the price of mainstream beer. Thanks to their tweaked recipes and Africa's abundant natural sorghum resource, prices are already falling fast.

A CNN Money article explains that the average American consumes 77 liters of beer annually. In Africa, not including South Africa, the average person only consumes about 7 liters. Because of this, SABMiller sees cheap sorghum beer as an opportunity to "crack a virgin market." Although sorghum is usually used for syrup and cattle feed in countries like Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia, SABMiller's Nile Breweries developed a beer recipe in 2002. CNN explains that by building high-tech microbreweries and micro supply chains sourcing local ingredients, SABMiller stabilizes the price of beer by reducing dependence on international imports, creating a more self-sustained and cheaper market for Africa. The new product is priced 20 percent less than imported barley beer.

This inexpensive yet high-quality beer is becoming popular very fast—nearly 35 percent of all beer in Uganda is now Nile's Eagle sorghum beer, which CNN reported is also sold in Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland. In 2008, Heineken and Diageo followed suit with a sorghum recipe for Ghana, Sierra Leone and Cameroon. Multinationals are racing into an untouched market.

Not only does the recreated sorghum recipe help boost profit for major beer companies, it sustains Africa's economy. According to a study by French business school INSEAD, Nile Breweries added about $92 million to the Ugandan economy and supported roughly 44,000 Ugandans through agricultural, manufacturing, retailing or distribution jobs in 2007. SABMiller is sending a share of this revenue to subsistence farmers at the bottom of its value chain.

"Our affordability model is attractive because it focuses on local crops and creates additional income for farmers and a new profit pool for us without cannibalizing our core product," says Andy Wales, head of Sustainable Development at SABMiller.

As CNN explains, SABMiller's idea of using local ingredients to tap new markets follows that of Coke and Danone. Africa will contain seven of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies by 2015, CNN says, and roughly 200 million Africans will enter the consumer goods market by 2016. Multinationals, such as Coke, Danone and now SABMiller, see vast opportunities in the very near future.

Not everyone thinks SABMiller's tactics will make a mark in Africa's economy. "Africa is still mom-and-pop," said Don Elefson, a fund manager for the Harding Loevner Frontier Emerging Markets Fund, explaining that multinationals will still remain "on the sidelines." But with SABMiller's next steps of using cassava-based beer in Mozambique and Southern Sudan, seeding a Tanzanian barley industry and creating better processors to preserve products while distributing, the company may be on a fast track to meet its long-term goal of halving the price of beer in Africa and tapping a huge new market.

It's children like these girls that may never recieve the free medicine from aid groups like Unicef, because of the thriving black market. Photo: Travlr (flickr)

BBC investigative reporter Sorious Samura uses a hidden camera to confront pharmacists selling Unicef-provided drugs distributed by Unicef in Sierra Leone. The drugs were intended to be distributed free of charge. When he tries to ask citizena how the pharmacists could sell medicines intended to be distributed for free, they appear confused: “We don’t have any medicine that is free here.”

This is one instance of corruption that Samura cites in his accompanying opinion piece raising questions about the value of aiding Africa and how much corruption distorts the good intentions of donors.

Future leaders of Sierra Leone. Photo: Mike North (flickr)

Sierra Leone is OK now. A newly-elected government is in power and day-to-day activities of the administration are ongoing.

—Olusegun Ogundeji, Concord Times of Freetown.

In the aftermath of the brutal civil war from 1991 to 2002 in Sierra Leone, tens of thousands lost their lives while one-third of the country's population was displaced. Today, however, Sierra Leone has enjoyed several years of peace and has strengthened its security sector, promoted human rights and rule of law, and prepared for upcoming elections. Now, the country is ready to rebuild its economy through new private investments.

Determined to make a fresh start, Sierra Leone’s new president, Ernest Bai Koroma, has promised to tackle the country's economy with a highly ambitious program of reforms aimed to encourage foreign and local investment, build basic public infrastructure and services, and improve government accountability. One such initiative by the Sierra Leonean government includes negotiating entry into the UK-based Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which would make corporations and government become more transparent — and more attractive to investors.

Sierra Leone’s government has also been working with the IFC World Bank Investment Climate team for Africa, which will advise them on how best to implement reforms “to improve the country’s investment environment and remove obstacles blocking private sector development.”

In addition to the agricultural and gold-mining industries, Sierra Leone’s tourism industry is also getting a makeover. According to The Independent, "London-based travel companies are now marketing the former British colony as an adventure holiday destination as well as the setting for off-season sun and surf vacations to compete with the Canary Islands.”

Sierra Leone has a long way to go. It still ranks near the bottom on the UN's Human Development Index, one popular indicator of a country's well-being. But even without private investment, Sierra Leone has a lot to celebrate. As the UN Peacebuilding Commission has noted, “Sierra Leone could take pride in having restored State authority throughout the country, disarmed former combatants, resettled over 1 million displaced people, held elections, re-established public and social institutions, rehabilitated government infrastructure and provided some basic services.”

For a country once torn by war, those are certainly signs of progress.