How a project with good aims delivered bitter outcomes in Sierra Leone

How a project with good aims delivered bitter outcomes in Sierra Leone: "To achieve the targets, concerns about women’s empowerment, restructuring of customary power relations, or economic inequality were de-prioritised. They were seen as something to be addressed only after the project was economically viable.



 The staff required to meet the initial targets were engineers, agriculturalists and farmers. Gender specialists, anthropologists, sociologists, or human rights advocates were unnecessary. There was no incentive, in essence, to prioritise those concerns or to spend scarce resources on such skills.



 For all their rhetoric about the positive impact the project would have on sustainable human development, the development banks and bilateral funders' funding mechanisms did not incorporate incentives to achieve such outcomes."



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