By Janet Sam-Kobba
Minister of Communication, Technology and Innovation, Salima Monorma Bah on Tuesday 13th August outlined the key achievements of her ministry over the years as an addendum to President Bio’s ‘Big Five’ development agenda. She was speaking at the Ministry of Information and Civic Education’s weekly press conference at youyi building Freetown, alongside several local and international ICT partners.
Minister Bah stated that one of the key achievements of her ministry was the successful conduct of the first ever tech summit that was graced with the presence of both local and international experts in ICT like Google, Amazon, Meta, in order to discuss solutions for service delivery. She said they were also able to showcase some innovators in Sierra Leone.
As part of the summit, President Julius Maada Bio launched the $50 million digital transformation project, the Felei Tech City project and the star link initiative, she noted.
“We were also able to showcase our own innovators here because President Bio said he believes that the challenges we face in Sierra Leone we have the solutions here, the young people have the solution,” Mrs Bah said.
She also mentioned the National Fiber Backbone 2 project, which is geared towards expanding fiber optic coverage to 14 of the 16 districts in Sierra Leone. Minister Bah further mentioned that nine rural telephone sites were also launched in farming communities to support the Sierra Leone government’s ‘Feed Salone’ project. This was done with funds from the Universal Access Development Fund (UADF).
According to the minister, they have been able to train over 3,200 pupils and 500 entrepreneurs in cybersecurity and digital marketing skills with support from Orange and Huawei.
Minister of Information and Civic Education, Chernor Bah also stated that before this time internet was a luxury and only the elite could access it, noting that those who did not have enough money to access it had to struggle to use internet.
“Some of us had to go wait at Mamie Yoko hotel until the workers were gone so we could make use of their computers. But today, internet is bread and butter and it is our daily existence,” he stated.
According to DataReportal, in 2023 there were 1.84 Million internet users in Sierra Leone and the internet penetration rate stood at 21.2 percent of the total population in early 2023.
Kepios analysis shows that internet users in the country increased by 126 thousand (+7.3 percent) between 2022 and 2023.
In 2024, the 4G network coverage in Sierra Leone is estimated to amount 72.11percent and the average broadband connection speed is estimated to amount 12.03k kbit/s.
The DataRepotal figures show that in 2024, the number of internet users in the country increased to 2.70 million at the start of the year and internet penetration stood at 30.4 percent. The country was home to 1.02million social media users in January 2024, equating to 11.5 percent of the total population.
The Technology Minister revealed that her ministry had established an interconnection between Guinea and Sierra Leone designed as technique to ensure network stability during outages. She also said that they are putting things in place to develop a pricing formula for mobile data like that of the fuel industry, in order to guarantee fair and transparent pricing for consumers.
Janet Sam-Kobba is an intern at ManoReporters and she is a final year student at the Mass Communication Department at Central University in Mile 91.
