🇸🇱 “We are not given the free will to make decisions on our own mineral resources”: Sierra Leone’s first lady criticizes neocolonialism

“There’s always a big brother who decides. And when you fight and say “no, we are not going to do this” they use the system to stop you. It’s either they set you up with the opposition and they will be supporting the opposition against you from the back, or they cause unnecessary chaos in your country so that you are not able to even govern your own people. They will do things to make you not to be functionable,” Fatima Maada Bio added.

She noted that almost all of Sierra Leone’s mining and electricity companies are foreign owned, and the country struggles to have enough electricity, which in turn affects the country’s infrastructure development, education and health systems.

🗣 “These are the things I believe that are stopping Africa from progressing. […] I don’t know why we celebrate independence, because we are not free.  […] Things need to change,” she concluded.