As Salone Scores 87.5% in 2019 EITI Standard…
SLEITI MSG Concludes 2022 Report Dissemination
By Mohamed Konneh
With support from the World Bank, through the Extractive Industries Technical Assistant Project (EITAP), the Multi-stakeholder Group (MSG) of the Sierra Leone Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (SLEITI) supervised by Office of the Vice President has concluded its nationwide dissemination of Sierra Leone 2022 Validation Assessment Report.
The nationwide exercise came following Sierra Leone’s outstanding score of 87.5 in its 2022 Validation assessment by the EITI Board under the 2019 Standard and the new Validation Model adopted by the Board to keep the momentum of EITI implementation.
The MSG initially presented the Validation report to President Julius Maada Bio at a well-attended ceremony at State House that was chaired by the Vice President, Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh and the Minister of State - Office of the Vice President, Mrs. Francess Piagie Alghali.
The event culminated to a nationwide dissemination which commenced on 2nd December 2022 in Port Loko District- North West and ended in Bo City, Southern Sierra Leone. The final leg of the dissemination was held on Wednesday 8th December 2022, at 85 Upper Wellington Street, in Freetown for the Western Area making the end of the dissemination.
Concluding the nationwide dissemination, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources, Mr. Keini Lamin said the presentation of the 2022 report gave a vivid background of where we are coming from as a country and what we have achieved.
The Permanent Secretary noted that Sierra Leone and Sierra Leoneans are proud because of the score in the latest EITI assessment of with Sierra Leone scored 87.5 in the implementation of the 2019 EITI Standard.
Mr. Lamin said the overall score reflect on three components including stakeholder’s engagement, transparency and outcome impact.
‘This is a great achievement and we thank the secretariat and the MSG for the work put into the 2019 implementation. The cooperation from other agencies including chiefdom administration, the Mineral Agency including our local authorities was great, he said.’
Mr. Lamin noted that all of these efforts were done to enhance the EITI implementation process, while noting that it was a long journey and that government will continue to do more.
He said the data collected was subjected to credible, independent audit and applying international audit standard.
The SLEITI National Coordinator, Mohamed Baimba Koroma was the technical led of the nationwide dissemination. His presentations across the country focused on the Validation report with emphasis on the three broad components under which Sierra Leone was assessed and this include Stakeholder Engagements, Transparency, and Outcomes and Impact.
The presentations painted a clear picture of the scores from each of the thirty-three individual requirements and how they feed in to the cumulative components scores.
The National Coordinator said the overall high score of 87.5 was so far impressive when compared to the previous validation report under the 2016 Standard in which Sierra Leone achieved “Meaningful Progress overall”.
A detail explanation of the corrective actions and strategic recommendations formed part of the high points of his presentations.
Sierra Leone this year achieved an overall high score of 87.5% in implementing the 2019 Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Standard. The overall score reflects an average of the three component scores on "Stakeholder engagement”, “Transparency”, and Outcomes and Impact.
The announcement was made by the EITI Board Chair- Hon. Helen Clerk at the 54th EITI Board meeting in Oslo, Norway.
The Validation assessment found that Sierra Leone has exceeded three EITI Requirements, Fully met 16, Mostly met 6 and Partly met 1 Requirement. Six EITI Requirements were not applicable, while Sierra Leone was also awarded two additional points on the Effectiveness and sustainability indicators.
The nationwide dissemination of the 2022 validation report was led by the MSG, while the three constituencies of the group were represented in all of the regional disseminations.
