Unregulated Open-Access versus Regulated Open-Access Fishing: Stakeholders Perceptions in Sierra Leone

Abstract

Fish stocks are declining in marine capture coastal fisheries in West Africa. Many observers have blamed climate change and the system of open access for the decline. Open-access fishing encourages too many people to take up fishing, and the result is overfishing of the stocks. According to such critics, this is a classic example of Hardin’s tragedy of the commons, whereby a continuous increase in the number of users of a natural resource eventually leads to the collapse of the resource. The present study, which analysed stakeholders’ perceptions about their open-access fishing in Siera Leone’s marine fisheries, conducted 32 key informant interviews. Our research found that while they perceived that open-access fishing impacted fish stocks, most Sierra Leone’s marine capture fishers did not see open access as a cause of fish decline; instead, they blamed the lack of enforced regulations on the methods and extent of fishing. Accordingly, these fishers favoured the continuation of open access—not least because it helps to alleviate hunger and is a readily available source of protein in Sierra Leone’s coastal communities—but accompanied by strict regulations on both the type of fishing gear used and the quantity, size, and species of fish caught. In other words, they preferred regulated open access to unregulated open access. The central government’s resolve to regulate its fishery will determine whether it will transition from unregulated open access to regulated open access or other forms of OA. This study recommends detailed research into how to influence political will to enforce regulations.

1. Introduction

The concept of open access (OA) lies at the centre of this paper. As [1] observed, it is the most common problem facing the capture fisheries sector and requires urgent attention. Open-access marine coastal fisheries in West Africa are viewed by observers from two different perspectives. Some observers champion them as vital lifelines for disadvantaged groups, including refugees, who are struggling to feed themselves and see fishing as a last resort to stave off hunger or even starvation [2]. By contrast, other observers criticise them as recipes for overfishing, which eventually threatens the extinction of fish stocks [3]. According to [3,4], both postulated that OA would eventually destroy a fish resource, the latter terming it the “tragedy of the commons”. This criticism of OA has been voiced countless times during the last 70 years, and [5] criticised it for focusing on short and not long-term economic gains. For [6], the nature of OA in developing countries is a threat to the management and sustainability of reef fisheries. Critics acknowledge that the failure of OA is now widespread, not least because of Western inheritance of access to the seas, and OA continues to present challenges for sustainable management of fisheries [7]. For decades, researchers have blamed economic problems facing coastal and fisheries-dependent communities on the common pool nature of fish resources [7]. OA is the old paradigm, and individual transferable quotas (ITQ) is the new paradigm, and the transition from one to the other is inevitable [8,9]. However, an important distinction has to be made between unregulated OA(UOA) and regulated OA (ROA) [1]. Unregulated open-access fishing happens when anyone can fish in ways that are convenient to them, whereas ROA allows everyone to fish, but with restrictions [1]. Many commentators fail to draw this distinction and assume that OA means not only free access but also the absence of any regulations. For example, refs. [6,8,10] described unregulated fisheries as OA and made no distinction between it and ROA. However, as Arthur [1] noted, there are many OA regimes across the world that work extremely well precisely because they have no restrictions on who can fish but have good regulations on how they can fish. According to [11], ROA ensures that fisheries management institutions regulate how users extract fish by enforcing regulations. Most of the criticisms of OA are actually criticisms of UOA, not ROA—i.e., criticisms of un-regulation, not of free access.

Making the distinction between UOA and ROA enables us to focus on the real issue, which is the regulation of OA regimes, not the abolition of OA regimes. If there is a tragedy of the commons, it is not due to the OA system in itself but to the unfairness and ineffectiveness of the regulations that are often imposed on OA systems. The essential value of OA is food security, and it can be safeguarded without compromising the fish resources on which that value depends if proper regulations are enforced [1]. The transition from UOA to ROA can be activated through legal agreements or institutional conditions [11]. For example, in the early nineties, the United States and Canada signed a treaty in which both countries committed themselves to set and implement total allowable catches (TACs). This helped the fishery transition from UOA to ROA [11].

Institutional conditions for transitioning from UOA to ROA include strengthening the capacity of an authoritative body to enforce regulations such as setting a total allocated catch (TAC), imposing closure when TACs have been reached, introducing seasonal closures and protected areas such as spawning sites, restricting certain types of gear, prescribing minimum landing sizes and release requirements for some fish species, and banning industrial fishing within the territorial waters of a state (12 nm from shore). Such institutional reforms are to be found in the agreement reached by some African countries, including Sierra Leone, Cape Verde, Senegal, Mauritania, Gambia, and Guinea Bissau [12].

The current study investigates stakeholders’ perceptions of OA fishing in Sierra Leone. Section 2 describes the current situation of Sierra Leone’s fisheries sector. Section 3 explains the methods of data collection used in this study. Section 4 and Section 5 present the results of the fieldwork and a discussion of the issues raised from the fieldwork data, respectively. Section 6 is the conclusion, which summarises the paper’s findings and contribution to the literature.

2. Case Study of the Small-Scale Fisheries (SSFs) Sector in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone’s fisheries sector is vital for both national and local economies. With an estimated harvestable annual value of USD 100 million, it contributes about 12% to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employs about 800,000 people out of its total population of 7 million [13]. However, with growing migration into fishing communities, there is increasing pressure on, and consequent decline in Sierra Leone’s fish stocks [2,14]. To try to save its declining fisheries during the last 50 years, Sierra Leone has experimented with four different fisheries management strategies. The first was the introduction of aquaculture as an alternative or supplementary livelihood in the late 1970s [15,16]. However, this strategy was not very effective because it lacked local and contextual knowledge of communities; it was not joined up with the capture marine fisheries sector, and it was pushed from the top down [16]. As a result, it failed to reduce the exploitation of depleted fish stocks [15,17]. Wealth creation fishing was the second strategy, but it focused on developing large-scale marine capture fisheries (LSF) and undermined the livelihood of fishing-dependent communities (SSF) as it encouraged the extraction of more fish [18,19]. The third strategy was fishing for social welfare, which aimed to support local marine SSFs in catching more fish. However, this strategy reinforced overfishing and the use of illegal fishing methods and equipment [18]. The Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR) managed these three failed management strategies centrally. The fourth strategy sought to move away from central government control and establish a local community-based fisheries management system in 2017. This strategy was the West African Regional Fisheries Programme (WARFP)’s introduction of territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs). WARFP anticipated that the newly developed Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) would be used to repopulate inshore areas with fish stocks under community management [20,21]. However, while there was some evidence that fishers and their communities could potentially manage TURFs, this initiative mostly failed for several reasons, including the passive involvement of fishers and other resource users in its development [21]. Thus, despite being a signatory to the 2012 Convention on the Determination of the Minimum Conditions for Access and Exploitation of Marine Resources within the Maritime Zones under the jurisdiction of the Member States of the Sub Regional Fisheries Commission (SRFC), Sierra Leone has failed to protect endangered and juvenile fish species [12,22].

Sierra Leone’s artisanal SSF sector uses a variety of dugout, planked canoes, and motorised boats to fish within 45 km from the coast at a depth of fewer than 50 m [23,24]. Although Sierra Leone’s 1994 Fisheries Act seeks to control marine fisheries through monitoring, surveillance, and enforcement of fisheries regulations across both its artisanal and industrial sectors, an increasing number of Sierra Leone’s SSF use illegal gear such as monofilament and mosquito nets and travel outside the territorial waters (12 nautical miles from shore) to search for fish [23]. There is an ongoing conflict around fishing rights between SSFs and their industrial counterparts (LSFs) who illicitly fish within territorial waters with illegal fishing equipment [23]. According to [25], Sierra Leone loses nearly 30 million US dollars every year to Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing; a report by [26] puts the figure at 40 million. IUU is responsible for the increasing decline in the fish stocks in Sierra Leone’s territorial waters [27]. Most industrial fishing in Sierra Leone’s territorial waters is carried out by foreign vessels, predominantly from China, some of which fish legally under government licences, but many others are operating illegally (IUU fishing) [28,29]. In 2018, the Vice-President of Sierra Leone (Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh) quoted a report from the FAO, which stated that IUU fishing accounted for half the country’s annual catch [27]. Part VI of the 1994 Management and Development Act forbids industrial fishing in the inshore economic zone (IEZ) (six nautical miles from the shore), which is reserved for SSF (artisanal) fishing activity. But a lack of political will undermines governmental enforcement of this measure [23,30]. Sierra Leone’s government has been accused of putting the short-term economic benefit it obtains from selling licences to foreign industrial fishers ahead of the long-term consequences of over-fishing [31]. Sierra Leone’s SSF claims that the national government does not impose sanctions on industrial fishers because of their contributions to the national income: tuna vessel pays as much as 45,000 dollars per year [23]. Moreover, the central government appears reluctant to enforce fishing regulations on artisanal fishers for fear of losing their votes in elections [23].

Together with climate change, which has adverse impacts on fish breeding grounds, reproduction, and survival [32,33], UOA threatens to reduce fish catch in Sierra Leone. In 1982, Sierra Leone’s marine artisanal sector harvested 35,000 metric tonnes (mt) of fish; by 2010, this figure had increased by 331% to 115,700 mt [24,28] and by 2020, this had increased by a further 52% to 228,451 mt, which vastly exceeded Sierra Leone’s maximum sustainable yield (MSY) of 122,500 mt for the year [28,34,35]. Over 90% of Sierra Leone’s fish stocks are now overexploited or depleted [36]. For example, Bobo Croaker (Pseudotolithus elongatus), Sea Catfish (Arius spp.), Bonga (Ethmalosa fimbriata) are overexploited [24,35]. Threadfin (Galeiodes decadactylus) and Round Herring (Sardinella aurita) are fully exploited. A recent stocktake shows that these fisheries are approaching a critical level and need urgent intervention to reverse their decline [37]. However, hunger, poverty, and malnutrition have continued to soar in fishing-dependent communities, so fishers and dependent communities are in a ‘poverty trap’, which creates conditions that reinforce overfishing and illegal fishing [23,38,39].

How to bring about the enforcement of effective regulations to curb overfishing by both the artisanal (SSF) and industrial (LSF) sectors within an OA system is, however, a major conundrum. The current study investigates stakeholders’ perceptions about OA fishing in Sierra Leone with a view to resolving this conundrum.

3. Methods

Sierra Leone is on the West Coast of Africa, with a total area of 71,600 km and a population of over 7 million people [40]. It is divided into the Western Area and the Southern and Eastern provinces [41]. Tombo, which is the case community for this study, is located in the Western Area, about 40km south of Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone [42,43]. Tombo was one of the largest and most flourishing fishing towns in Sierra Leone since the precolonial era, but this is no longer the case, especially with Sierra Leone’s expansion of its industrial fishing sector [30,43]. Figure 1 shows the map of Sierra Lëone and the location of Tombo.

This study used qualitative primary data collected between June 2021 and December 2021 from 32 interviewees in Tombo and secondary materials from the literature. Primary data provided current information on stakeholders’ perceptions about their OA fisheries, and materials from the literature (secondary data) were used to contextualise this finding within the existing literature. The interviewees comprised SSFs, representatives of fishers’ community-based organisations, researchers, and staff from the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources. In investigating the perceptions held by stakeholders in Sierra Leone about open-access fishing, this study used semi-structured questions to enable participants to present their responses in their own ways, thereby encouraging them to reveal deeper insights than closed questions might have elicited. All 32 participants were recruited through snowball sampling based on the following: (1) their willingness to participate in this study; (2) their knowledge of the research topic; and (3) their active involvement in fishing, research, and management. The research team used recruited participants to recruit other participants. For diversity and to reduce researcher bias, recruited participants were encouraged to recommend potential participants from stakeholder groups who shared similar or contrasting views to themselves [44]. The participants comprised 21 SSFs, one fishmonger, two researchers from Sierra Leone universities, three leaders of fishers’ union organisations, one community leader, and four staff from the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resource [45]. The research team stopped recruiting participants after observing consistent similarities and repetition in participants’ responses [46]

The 32 recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed using hybrid thematic content techniques [47]. Identified themes were threaded together, and the frequencies with which themes occurred were converted to percentages.

4. Results

The results of the fieldwork are focused on stakeholders’ perceptions about Sierra Leone’s marine artisanal capture OA (largely) unregulated fishery.

The issue of whether Sierra Leone’s marine artisanal capture fishery is or is not OA and is or is not regulated is contentious, with divided views among its fishers. On OA, KI-1 (a fisherman and Chairman of a Fishers’ Union) said, “We pay a licence fee to the government”, a statement that 65% of fellow fishers agreed with, implying that the fishery was not OA. However, 10% of fishers were unaware that they should pay licence fees. For example, KI-2 (a fisherman) claimed, “It is only the big trawlers [industrial fishermen] that pay licence fees to the government”. Moreover, some fishers said that the purpose of the licence fee was not to limit access but to monitor the movements of fishing vessels to determine how many travelled to fish and how many of them returned. In any case, 85% of fishers said that the licence fee was largely ignored by the authorities. So, although formally, there is a licence provision for SSF, to all intents and purposes, the inshore fishery in Sierra Leone is OA. As KI-3 (a member of staff of the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR)) explained,

“For a very long time we were not concentrating on fisheries…I tell you it was in 1994 that the military government under the NDRC established the Department of Fisheries. Before this time, it was under the Ministry of Agriculture. It was never taken seriously…small-scale fishermen were not paying licences, they fished for free. Today, they think it is their right to fish for free because in the past they did not have to pay licencing fees”.

On regulation, 30% of respondents said that there were regulations. For example, KI-4 (a researcher) said that there were ‘partial’ regulations, “Yes, we need to regulate our fisheries…we have this problem of completely regulating our marine fisheries, it is at the moment partially regulated”. However, the regulations that formally exist are not enforced. KI-5 (a fisherman) explained that the government lacked the necessary resources to enforce the fisheries regulations, “The problem is that the MFMR do not have enough enumerators and field staff that visit our fishing communities and fish landing sites…this is why our fishermen use bad fishing nets”. KI-6 (a fisherman and chairman of a Fishers Union) said, “Our people fish in areas that fishing should not be done especially in the breeding grounds”. In effect, therefore, there are no regulations in place.

Some fishers defended the lack of enforcement of regulations. For example, KI-7 (a fisherman) said that the use of monofilament nets is essential for marine artisanal capture fishers, “Fish is hard to catch these days, with this net [monofilament] we can catch different types of fish more quickly…it is efficient”. KI-8 (a fisherman) said that undersized fish were a lifeline for poor fishers, “The poor manage their lives with juvenile fish”. Likewise, KI-9 (a fisherman) said, “Yes, we catch and sell juvenile fish in our local markets for home consumption…our poor people always buy small fish: that is what they can afford. Small fish is cheaper than the big ones, and Sierra Leone is a poor country where many of its people cannot afford to buy big fish”. Moreover, as the aquaculture fish meal market expanded, the market for juvenile fish increased, “Our people catch baby fish and sell them to factories that produce fish meal…sure there is more money in this business” (KI-10, a fisherman).

However, other fishers criticised the government’s failure to enforce regulations. For example, KI-11 (a fisherman) said, “It will be good for the Marine [Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources] to stop people from catching baby fish”. KI-12 (a fisherman) complained that lack of government control meant large vessels were being given to artisanals by foreign owners, “Foreigners buy very powerful boats for our local fisherman and our men register these boats and pay licence fees to local council…it is an agreement and monies made can either be paid to the original boat owner, or the fish catch can be transferred to the original owner”. KI-13 (a fisherman) said, “Sierra Leone indigenes living abroad, buy high powered boats for their relatives at home to fish and remit monies made to them”. This practice has resulted in overfishing. KI-14 (a fisherman) said, “This is a big problem, Mr X owns about eight boats and these boats go out to the sea every day, morning, afternoon and night…our big fishermen are greedy”.

Also, the lack of restrictions on selling fish has led to fish being sold to foreigners rather than to local fishmongers, “When you sell your fish to the Chinese in the landing site, you make more money” (KI-15, a fisherman). KI-16 (a fisherman) said, “You know we make more money selling our catch to foreigners and sometimes they pay upfront”.

All the fishermen who participated in this study agreed that the fish stocks were in decline, “There are fewer fish in our water…we used to catch different types of fish like the umbrella fish, but now it is herring that we see everywhere and even the herring are disappearing from our waters” (KI-17, a fisherman). This decline in fish stocks was attributed by fishers to a lack of effective regulations preventing the above practices,

“Our government allows the big trawlers to catch all our fish, so what are we poor fishers going to do? Our children need to eat, and we are few fish in our water, so we use this net [monofilament] to help us catch fish to keep body and soul going…this is how we survive here” [KI-18, a fisherman].

Most (67%) respondents blamed the governmental failure to control offshore over-fishing by both legal and illegal industrial fishers, “Foreigners catch all our fish, they catch our fish and also cut our nets…our government supports them because they are issuing licenses to them” (KI- 19, a fisherman). Another fisherman, KI-32, said “There is enough fish in the water. It’s the pressure we are getting from the trawlers they trawl all type of fish small or big, that has led to the reductions of fish in the water…also the foreign trawlers…destroys our net and ran away because their engines are faster than ours, and in the end, we end up losing our net on the sea”. KI-8, a fisherman, said, “The problem is not us [small-scale fishers], it’s the big trawler fishermen…they fish illegal and so catch all our fish, but we know that our government will not chase them away, and this is why the problem will continue forever”.

KI-20 (an official at the MFMR) said the root of the problem was a lack of governmental interest in the SSF sector, “Government do not care about the fisheries…there is no support from the government…there is no continuity, there is no clarity of vision or focus”. KI-21 (a fisheries researcher) said that what was lacking was political will: “For years we have been moving from one management arrangement to another, yet things are getter worse by the day…we cannot even control our fishermen, so you see the solution should not be changing management arrangement but political will from the Sierra Leone government to make our fisheries work for today and the future generation”.

Sierra Leone’s SSF were also critical of local community-based fisheries management (CBFM), which was introduced in 2017. One criticism was that CBFM members themselves breached regulations. For example, KI-23 (a fisherman) alleged that CBFM committee members are community elites who do not follow the fishing regulations they themselves have put in place, “These executives have several boats, and they also catch juvenile fish”. KI-24 (a CBFM executive member) said “They [CBFM executives], manage boats for foreigners…they catch many fish, big and small, using small and monofilament nets…Our baby fish, big fish, sharks, and everything in our waters is at risk and nobody cares, not even the government that formed the CBFM”. KI-25 (a fisherman) said “It is not only Mr X that owns several fishing boats, most members of the Fisheries Community Management Association [FCMA] own more than one boat, and they use small nets to catch baby fish”. KI-26 (a woman fishmonger) asked, “To what extent can CBFM solve the problems facing our fisheries?…they cannot even regulate our fisheries”. KI-27 (a fisherman and member of a CBFM) said that CBFMs lacked the resources to regulate local fisheries, “Since they formed the Fisheries Community Management Association (FCMA), no one has supported our activities and we cannot manage this organization from our purse, so I don’t know whether we would continue or not”. KI-25 (a fisherman) questioned the seriousness of the government in establishing CBFMs, “For CBFM to work here, there needs to be financial support, clarity of roles…I think our government have not made up their minds to hand over fisheries management to communities”. KI-2 (a fisherman) said, “I don’t even know that there is any CBFM in our community”.

A final issue is how respondents think the fisheries regulations could be enforced, if the core problem is the government’s lack of political will to enforce regulations, how could that political will be strengthened? Participants did not suggest solutions for influencing political will, but most SSFs want restrictions on the industrial sector. If the MFMR withdrew licenses from the industrial sector, this could release more fish for the SSF sector and avoid the need to impose harsh restrictions on artisanal fishers. This differential treatment of the two sectors—severe restrictions on LSF and lighter restrictions on SSF—seems to be favoured by staff at the MFMR, who recommend that although both sectors require regulation, a lighter touch is needed for the SSF, “We need to regulate the small-scale fishery and the industrial, but look we need to do this with caution…our people are very poor, I mean very poor, so strict regulation will result in severe consequences” (KI-20, staff of the Ministry of Fisheries Marine Resources].

5. Discussion

The findings from the fieldwork suggest that both OA and regulations are contested issues in the SSF sector in Sierra Leone. Although there is a formal licence requirement that ordinarily would undermine OA, it seems to be largely ignored by both fishers and management, and so, effectively, the system is OA. For 85% of fishers, this effective absence of access restriction was welcome because OA provided succour to the poorest people and jettisoning it would leave them completely destitute (see

Table 1. Stakeholders’ analysis of their OA fisheries.

Questions	Participants’ Perceptions of OA	KIs Percentages (%)
Stakeholders’ analysis of their fisheries	Pay fishing licence, therefore, is not open access	65
	Can fish anytime and with any fishing equipment. It is open access.	30
	It is partially regulated OA	30
	Not sure whether it is regulated or unregulated OA	1
2. Positive benefits of OA	Food and income	100
3. Factors that enable OA fishing in Sierra Leone	Lack of political will to effectively regulate OA	85
	Government control of artisanal fisheries and community-based fisheries organisations	85
	Poor control of value chain	43
4. Negative impacts of prevailing OA fishing on fish stocks and communities	Decline in fish stocks	67
	Impacting on food and income	45

Source: Authors’ fieldwork, 2021.

). On regulations, although there are formal regulations, according to some participants (30%), they are regrettably poorly enforced. Virtually all respondents agreed that fish stocks are declining in coastal fisheries in Sierra Leone (see Table 1). However, is the failure due to the OA system or the absence of enforced regulations? In the SSF view, the primary cause of the decline in fish stocks is a lack of enforced regulations on industrial fishing, and the secondary cause of the decline is a lack of enforced regulations on the use of monofilament and mosquito nets by SSF, not the OA system. This view is replicated in the literature. According to [27], this shows the desperation of the SSF for survival by indulging in such damaging modes of fishing. Similar views are expressed by [23,31]. The problem is not that too many people are fishing but that too many fishers are using unsustainable methods of fishing. If LSF were prevented from using industrial trawling in inshore areas and SSF were prevented from using monofilament and mosquito nets, illegal fishing would be curbed. So, the central question is not about OA but how to enforce regulations that are designed to protect the fish stocks from damaging forms of fishing.

On this central question, there are some answers to be found in both the literature and the interview transcripts obtained for the present study. In the literature on IUU, ref. [48] point out that in Indonesia, tough measures have successfully limited IUU fishing activities. The main reasons why IUU persists across the world are inadequate monitoring control and surveillance and poor enforcement of state fisheries regulations and laws [49]. Juned et al. [48] discuss whether states should criminalise IUU activities rather than treat them as civil or administrative offences. Some writers claim that the persistence of IUU is because states have not criminalised it [50,51]. But [49] argue that the crucial issue is not whether IUU is criminalised but whether states are resolute in enforcing penalties—whether criminal or civil—against IUU fishers. In the literature on SSF in Sierra Leone, [27] recommends that the government switches its priority from a wealth-creation policy, which sees fish as a commodity to be traded for profit, to a welfare-maximisation policy, thereby favouring the artisanal sector rather than the industrial sector. Fishing for social welfare is crucial for satisfying basic needs such as food security and nutrition and providing employment in dependent communities [18]. This would concentrate limited governmental resources on enforcing regulations on the LSF sector. However, whether Sierra Leone’s fishery will transition from UOA to ROA depends on the political resolve of the government to enforce regulations. A problem faced by enforcers of the regulations on IUU fishers is that international law places restrictions on flag states attempting to impose penalties on IUU vessels flying the flags of other states [27]. Conteh [27] refers to international efforts to help Sierra Leone deal with IUU, including the work of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and FAO, but [52] claim that these efforts have failed because of the government’s weak capacity to implement them.

6. Conclusions

This paper has found that in the opinion of the SSF fishers in Sierra Leone, the ostensible cause of failure—open-access (OA)—is not the primary reason for the decline in coastal fish stocks. The main factor is the lack of enforced regulations to prevent industrial trawling used by LFS within the territorial waters of Sierra Leone—i.e., 12 nm from the shoreline—and the consequent use of monofilament and mosquito nets by SSF to make up for the shortfall of larger fish removed by industrial vessels. Whether Sierra Leone’s fishery will transition from UOA to ROA or other forms of OA depends on the government’s political resolve to enforce regulations. On the central question of how such regulations can be enforced, the most compelling answer from the literature and the respondents was how to influence political will. This study recommends that research be undertaken into how to influence political will to enforce regulations in Sierra Leone.