Sierra Leone, Benin miss out on US Millennium Fund over graft

Freetown. Sierra Leone and Benin have missed out on crucial funding from the US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) for failing to curb corruption.On Tuesday, the MCC board refrained from voting to renew funding for the pair with hundreds of millions of dollars.A US government-funded programme, the MCC seeks to reward developing countries for their efforts in democratisation and poverty alleviation.Eligible countries go through several years of assessment based on indicators which they are required to pass repeatedly to share part of the Corporation’s $2 billion budget.In December 2012, Sierra Leone and Benin were among seven countries selected as eligible to develop compact and threshold programmes. The others were Ghana, Liberia, Morocco, Niger, and Tanzania.An MCC national coordinating unit was immediately instituted by President Ernest Bai Koroma.Last November, the MCC board confirmed all seven selected countries were up for review in December but warned that Benin and Sierra Leone were in danger of losing out for failing to pass the indicator on curbing corruption – the so-called ‘hard hurdle’.According to the MCC’s yearly Country Scorecard released on November 6, Sierra Leone passed in 11 out of 20 indicators, including political rights and freedom of information.But the West African country failed on, among others, fiscal policy, natural resources governance and, crucially, control of corruption.Benin, too, failed on corruption. The MCC board said it could not put them up for voting because of their performance on the corruption indicator.It re-selected Ghana, Liberia, Morocco, Niger and Tanzania as eligible.The board also surprisingly selected Lesotho as eligible to develop a proposal for a new compact, following its completion in September of its five-year $363 million compact which was used to expand water supply and strength the healthcare system.The decision means Sierra Leone and Benin are officially out of the race, at least until the next review in December 2014.This comes as a major blow for the Sierra Leone government which is yet to make any official comment on the matter.The quick passage of the Freedom of Information law in October was thought to have been done under pressure from the MCC.Last month, following the release of the MCC’s 2013 country scorecard, some reports suggested Sierra Leone had been disqualified, prompting a bitter response from the government.The MCC was even forced to issue a statement reassuring the Sierra Leonean public that their country was still under consideration.Then on Tuesday, the bad news came in.Mamoud Idriss, the man appointed by President Koroma to coordinate the country’s effort in securing the funding, couldn’t have been more blunt when he disclosed the news.“We have failed to pass and that is it,” he said, adding: “It’s a wake up call for all of us.”Post-war Sierra Leone’s economy is in dire need of funding to push on with its massive infrastructural development initiatives.But commentators say what is at stake for the government is not just about losing the money that comes with the MCC approval; it is about losing an endorsement by an important international organisation from which Sierra Leone can make good political capital from.Little wonder then that a heated nationwide debate has been generated with criticism directed at the government’s perceived lack of resolve to fight graft.