BY: SAMUEL KARIM, AND CHIEF ABDUL BERO KAMARA

(Consultants, Researchers, Academics, and Socio-Politico Analysts)

5th January 2026

In Sierra Leone today, the Leone is not a currency it is a daily joke, and the punchline is the suffering of the people. Each morning, citizens wake up poorer than they were the night before, not because they slept badly, but because the Julius Maada Bio–led government has perfected the art of economic incompetence, baptized it with IMF approval, and called it reform.

Inflation has become our national anthem. Prices rise faster than government excuses. The exchange rate dances wildly, while State House watches from air-conditioned offices, clutching IMF documents like Holy Scripture. According to this government, the solution to every economic problem is simple: borrow more, devalue more, tax more, and explain later.

Under the Bio administration, the Leone has been turned into a ritual offering slaughtered repeatedly on the altar of IMF conditionality. Each devaluation is announced as “necessary adjustment,” while market women translate it correctly as hunger, transport operators call it bankruptcy, and workers know it as silent salary cuts.

What kind of economic logic devalues a currency in a countrythat imports almost everything even the rice it eats and the fuel it burns? That is not reform; it is state-sponsored inflation.

The IMF demands “liberalization,” and the government obeys like a loyal pupil desperate for praise. But liberalization in a weak economy is like removing the roof of a leaking house during a thunderstorm then blaming the rain.

This government borrows as if debt has no consequences and tomorrow does not exist. IMF loans arrive with loud press conferences and patriotic slogans, but leave quietly like thieves in the night after funding consumption, bureaucracy, and political survival.

Where is the industrial base these loans were supposed to build?

Where are the factories?

Where is the export growth?

Where is the employment?

The answers are nowhere because the loans were never meant to transform the economy. They were meant to keep the government afloat while the people drown. This is not economic management; it is economic theatre. Austerity for the Poor, Luxury for the Powerful

Under IMF-backed austerity, subsidies vanish, taxes multiply, and public hardship increases. Yet government convoys grow longer, foreign trips increase, and governance becomes more expensive, not less.

The message is clear:

The poor must tighten their belts

The government must loosen its own

A man who cannot afford rice is told to “be patient.” A woman whose transport fare has doubled is advised to “understand global dynamics.” Meanwhile, those in power remain immune to the consequences of the policies they impose. This is not leadership. It is economic cruelty wrapped in policy language.

The Bio government wears IMF approval like a medal of honor, but in truth it is a certificate of dependency. No serious developing nation has ever escaped poverty by permanently outsourcing its economic sovereignty.

Across Africa, countries are beginning to ask uncomfortable questions:

Why must weak economies absorb shocks meant for strong ones?

Why must ordinary citizens pay for elite mismanagement?

Why must development be postponed in the name of “stability” that never comes?

Sierra Leone should be asking these questions too. Instead, the Bio government bows again and again before the IMF, sacrificing national interest for donor applause.

Our economy is fragile: import-driven, under-productive, debt-dependent, and vulnerable. But fragility requires careful, intelligent management not reckless experimentation.

This government has confused obedience with competence and borrowing with strategy. There is no grand economic vision only survival tactics, excuses, and press statements. When a government cannot stabilize prices, protect its currency, or reduce suffering, yet insists on staying the course, it is no longer mistaken it is indifferent.

The market has already passed its verdict. The Leone is collapsing. Inflation is roaring. The people are exhausted.

No amount of IMF jargon can hide the truth:

This government has failed economically.

And until Sierra Leone breaks free from policy laziness, donor dependency, and IMF worship, the country will remain trapped borrowing to survive, devaluing to obey, and suffering to comply.

The Leone is bleeding. The people are paying. And the government is applauding itself.