In the lush garden of the British High Commission in Sierra Leone, the UK foreign secretary James Cleverly addressed a gathering of mostly female politicians, campaigners and entrepreneurs: “You cannot have a successful country without successful women. The future of this country rests on the shoulders of strong, powerful women. You are the future of this country.”
It was International Women’s Day and Cleverly’s speech last week was the culmination of a whistlestop tour of his late mother’s birthplace. Earlier that day he had been welcomed to the southern city of Bo, the second largest in the country, by hundreds of people riding motorbikes and wearing T-shirts bearing the message: “The people of Bo Town warmly welcome Rt Hon James Cleverly.” Car horns were honked, schoolchildren and brass bands lined the road, and anxious radio exchanges were going on between the official cars as Foreign Office staff worried about the delay to the tight schedule.
“It’s not often I’m lost for words but this has been an unbelievable honour and wonderful to be back home,” said Cleverly when he finally arrived at Bo government hospital, before being whisked off to tour the neonatal unit.
The family connection was one reason Cleverly chose Sierra Leone to launch a new global gender equality strategy, the first since the Foreign Office merged with the Department for International Development in 2020. “I think of her [his mother] all the time in the work we do which is why I took the decision to do it in the country of her birth,” he said.
The other reason was that Sierra Leone looks like a poster child for bilateral aid. As the climate crisis and conflict worsen inequalities around the world, and extremist governments brutally suppress women fighting for the most basic rights, here is a country making great strides, transitioning from having one of the worst records globally on women’s health, education and equality to taking widely praised steps to improve the lives of 52% of its population.
In partnership with Saving Lives in Sierra Leone, the FCDO’s leading health programme, the country has reduced maternal mortality rates from 1,165 per 100,000 in 2013 – the world’s highest – to 717 per 100,000 in 2019. Health minister Dr Austin Demby said the ambition is “to be like Finland” – where the rate is among the world’s lowest.
In November president Julius Maada Bio announced that a quarter of the national budget would be allocated to education. That same month Bio told the UK House of Lords of his vision to “nurture the talents and … mine the full potential of every child in Sierra Leone”, especially girls.
The safe motherhood bill, which overturns colonial-era laws to extend access to abortion, was hailed by rights groups as a “landmark moment”.
In January, the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act was seen as another groundbreaking step for rights in these areas. The law stipulates that women must make up 30% of employees in public and private organisations, and that 30% of candidates put forward by any political party for parliamentary and local elections must be female; it also enshrines improvements in women’s access to finance, employment opportunities, equal pay and maternity leave.
Glimpses of this progress were visible as Cleverly – whose mother trained as a midwife in the UK after leaving Sierra Leone – was ushered from the hospital to an Islamic school and later to a sustainable forestry company called Miro – all projects funded by UK aid. At the Islamic Call secondary school, in one of the poorest areas of the city, the pupils were eager to tell him about the school’s trailblazing zero-tolerance policy on gender-based violence, and how they have been encouraged to report any abuse they experienced. “I didn’t know flogging was violence,” said one teenager.
Filming himself surrounded by excited kids calling out the jobs they aspired to, Cleverly told his Twitter followers: “The UK, your money, supports projects like this, helping these young people develop, helping to educate … the future leaders – this makes such a difference.”
When the UK government circus comes to a place such as Bo, the mission is to capture these soundbites for social media, but casting a shadow over events is aid cuts. Even the projects selected to demonstrate the difference aid makes are not immune.
Saving Lives lost about 50% of its funding in 2022, according to Flaviour Nhawu, a public health specialist for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), forcing the group to scale back their work – including a reduction in family planning outreach teams and community engagement work.
As Cleverly stood in the playground highlighting the benefits of UK aid, the juniors principal of the school, Janet Howafai, said the support only extends to learning materials and transport for teachers to attend training sessions. The school has nowhere near enough money to build on the work it has started. “We are happy to receive him”, Howafai said of the visit, “but we want to ask him to provide funding.
“There are a lot of constraints, even the building isn’t enough for us. We need a room for mentors to talk to girls in private. We need a fence to improve security. Even sanitary towels – girls are using native pads.”
A lack of money is hardly surprising. A £4.2bn cut in British aid in 2021 – including slashing its contribution to the UN population fund, UNFPA, by 85% (providing 40% of the world’s contraception) – has had a devastating impact globally, bringing accusations the government is abandoning women.
The overall budget has been further diminished by the decision to allow the Home Office to raid the overseas aid pot to support refugees in the UK, shortchanging the world’s poorest people, according to a report by the international development committee (IDC) earlier this month. “The haemorrhaging of funds from the FCDO’s budget to the Home Office is robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said Sarah Champion, the committee chair.
On the same day Cleverly was promoting his plan in Sierra Leone to “put women and girls at the heart of our international work”, the IDC was launching another inquiry, this time into how cuts have affected sexual and reproductive health programmes in lower-income countries.
The IRC also launched a report – Why Wait? – calling on the government to restore funding. “The lack of funding to women’s rights and women-led organisations is an alarming oversight that disenfranchises women’s voices, capacities, leadership, and agency,” said Inah Kaloga, the senior director of violence response and protection at the IRC.
All of which raises the question: how will the new strategy, launched with such fanfare, be funded?
Cleverly doesn’t like that query. Speaking exclusively to the Guardian in Freetown, he declined to put a figure on the plan.
“It’s the wrong question,” he said. “The point is, it’s not about inputs, it’s about outputs. The hospital facility [in Bo] we were at, we’ve had to reduce our direct bilateral funding, but we are working to ensure that project continues by leveraging in money from the World Bank and US Aid. It’s making sure the outputs continue – and one key output was the reduction in child mortality. It’s not about our bilateral input, it’s about their ability to deliver.”
He went on to say the fact that the reduction in overseas development aid (ODA) expenditure had had an impact was proof that aid could make a difference. “If we were saying that we could reduce ODA expenditure without having any detrimental impact, by definition it would mean much of that expenditure wasn’t making a difference.”
“Diplomacy” and “creative” approaches were also key to plugging development gaps, he said.
“I can’t make more money. We’ve got the constraints we’ve got … until that economic envelope gives me more money, we’ve got to box clever. What I’m saying to people across the [government’s development] network – slightly unfairly I know – is that I’m asking them to work even smarter still, be really innovative and really creative.”
ODA will return to the UN-recommended 0.7% – the Conservatives controversially slashed it to 0.5% in 2021 – he said, though not when, “and the best practice we’re baking into the system will mean that when that money does come back on stream we can use it even more effectively”.
A second round of sanctions against individuals who perpetuate sexual violence, announced at the same time, are another tool in the fight against growing threats against women, Cleverly said. “The message I want to send to people who abuse women around the world is we’re watching and we’re going to come after you.”
The FCDO also launched a new £38m programme to support women’s rights organisations globally, with about £650,000 to be spent in Sierra Leone.
The death of a two-year-old during Cleverly’s visit was a stark reminder of the desperate need to fund grassroots activism. While the cause of death has not been confirmed, campaigners against female genital mutilation believe the girl bled to death after being cut. FGM is often performed by secret female societies. According to reports the police intercepted one of the societies as they buried the child.
Rugiatu Turay, an anti-FGM campaigner and founder of the Amazonian Initiative Movement (AIM), was among those present at the British High Commission reception. She said any strategy seeking to address violence against women must include ending FGM: “FGM is the missing link. FGM links to wider violence against women such as early marriage and maternal deaths.”
Decades of campaigning in Sierra Leone have had some impact: awareness is higher and some communities have agreed to alternative, non-harmful ceremonies, but the rate of FGM is still 86% – and the proposed child rights law stops short of banning the practice. Instead it will introduce 18 as the age of consent for FGM, a controversial notion.
“Their argument is that women have the right to make decisions over their bodies, but how can I consent to hurt my body?” said Turay.
Also at the event were others who challenged the idea that Sierra Leone is making progress.
Dr Nemata Majeks-Walker founded the 50/50 Group of Sierra Leone, which encourages women’s participation in politics, and is scathing about the gender equality bill: “I’m so angry about it. We have been fighting about [fair representation] for years. The new law does not capture most of what we wanted. It’s lip service. By now we should be 50% but they don’t want us to have their seats; they feel intimidated; they feel women will take their place.”
Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, the mayor of Freetown, who announced on 6 March her intention to run for a second term, agreed. “This is a government that says and doesn’t do. There is a huge gap between rhetoric and reality – they are very good at making announcements. [But it is] a cynical exercise to meet international indexes and to check all the boxes.”
Aki-Sawyerr’s progressive policies, particularly on the climate crisis, have won her plaudits internationally, but in Sierra Leone she has been harassed, intimidated, falsely accused of inciting deadly protests last August and arrested. “They are obsessed with removing me from the political space. You could say I pose a threat – which is rooted in the fact that women are more development oriented and less likely to be involved in corruption.”
Femi Claudius Cole, the founder of the Unity party and the only female leader of a political party in Sierra Leone, has also been arrested over orchestrating protests and had her passport confiscated – she has yet to get it back.
Perhaps it was this disconnect, between Cleverly’s warm words and the reality of being a “strong, powerful woman” in Sierra Leone, that riled Cole as she listened to his speech. “It’s makeup on a disfigurement,” she said of the event.
“We have these functions where we dress up and attend and make polite conversation, when just beneath the surface things haven’t changed at all. At the end of such a lovely evening, what’s our takeaway?
“What are we doing to help the women who have no Facebook pages, no Twitter account, no access to a microphone, no media outlets to engage them … what are we doing?”
