Mohammed Kroma Esq: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 10 June 2026:
Sierra Leone’s former Chief Minister and Foreign Minister – Professor David Francis, has written a book. It is titled Governing a Poor Country. Do not be fooled by the academic polish. This is not a study. It is a defence.
Francis was the Chief Minister appointed by President Bio. The architect. The CEO of the executive engine. He did not watch the New Direction from the sidelines. He built it.
Now he asks us to reflect on poverty. He frames the nation’s economic hardship as a structural cage. An alibi for failure. But poverty is not a shield. It is the condition leadership exists to break.
Francis speaks of coordination hubs. The Office of the Chief Minister.
Synergies. But synergies do not feed people. Coordination without outcome is administrative theatre. It erodes ministerial autonomy. It centralizes power while the grassroots wait.
Read this book alongside the 2018 GTT Report. Francis chaired that too. He promised a cleansing. He justified billions in expenditure on the altar of image.
The result? The Bio Paradox.
A government that promised to clean the nation now stands stained. Not by the past, but by the present. Drug trafficking allegations.
Organized crime. A reputation in sinking sand. The 2018 cleansing was a performance. The 2026 reality is a crisis.
You cannot document stewardship while ignoring the decay. You cannot celebrate coordination while the ports become corridors for transnational crime.
This is legacy-polishing for the international stage. It is a CV for a future global post. But for the Sierra Leonean citizen, it is an empty vessel.
The second stain always bites deeper than the first. History is watching. And history does not read alibis.
Editor’s note
According to the publishers of the book Governing a Poor Country: Perspectives from a Former Chief Minister of Sierra Leone examines how and why the office of the Chief Minister of the Republic of Sierra Leone contributes to the political and economic management of the country. It raises and attempts to answer some fundamental questions about the wisdom, constitutionality, and the necessity of using that office to pursue innovative governance by the New Direction administration in Sierra Leone.
Drawing from the governance experience of having served as the first Chief Minister of the country, Professor Francis provides a first-hand, candid, in-depth and critically reflective account of the role and mandate of that office.
The book will be of interest to political leaders, academics, policy practitioners, diplomats, educators, journalists, and others interested in Sierra Leone, African politics, and national governance issues.
You can get your copy of the book by clicking on the image below:
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