Civil society in Kono District, Sierra Leone: Capacity, constraints, and potential to contribute to local Sustainable Development Goals

This study examines the organisational capacity and constraints of civil society organisations (CSOs) in Kono District, Sierra Leone and their potential to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) there. Capacity was found to be very low, with major constraints both internal and external preventing capacity growth and effectiveness. These included poor internal systems and member cooperation, external financial and in-kind dependency, power and politics within and without CSOs, communities’ fear of speaking to power and therefore their abdication of roles as checks and balances to hold leaders to account. Several options are available to CSOs, councils and chiefs to address Kono’s effectiveness at delivering the SDGs for Kono.

The Chiefs of Community Policing in Rural Sierra Leone

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that when police reform in Sierra Leone was instituted to consolidate a state system after the country's civil war ended in 2002, it reproduced a hybrid order instead that is embodied by Sierra Leone's primary local leaders: paramount and lesser chiefs. In this sense, policing has a distinctly political quality to it because those who enforce order also define what order is and determine access to resources. The hybrid authority of Sierra Leone's chiefs emanates from multiple state-based and localised sources simultaneously and comes into play as policing takes place and police reform moves forward. This argument is substantiated by an ethnographic exploration of how and with what implications community policing has been introduced in Peyima, a small town in Kono District, and focuses on one of its primary institutional expressions, Local Policing Partnership Boards.