policy paper

📄 Policy Brief· Education · Research · 2025 Free Quality Education as a Model for Human Capital Investment Across Sub-Saharan Africa When President Bio launched the Free Quality School Education Programme in August 2018  just five months after taking office  critics called it a “political gimmick.” Seven years later, the evidence is definitive. The Results According to the Global Partnership for Education, which named President Bio a GPE Champion in March 2026: school enrolment increased by nearly 50%, bringing approximately one million new learners into the national education system. 800,000 pupils receive free school meals daily. Thousands of schools receive free teaching and learning materials. The government allocates over 20% of the national budget to education — among the highest proportions on the continent, sustained through COVID-19, debt pressure and inflation. ❝ “Thousands of boys and girls who could never have afforded a good education will go to school and become the best surgeons, AI experts, software engineers and builders of world-class businesses.”  Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, JMBLC 2025 The Replication Blueprint The paper identifies five design choices that made Sierra Leone’s FQSE replicable: sustained political commitment; universal coverage without means-testing; gender-specific components; domestic financing at scale; and strategic international partnership. It maps a 10-step implementation guide for education ministers in other African states.

📄 Policy Paper · Peace & Securityuth · Research · 2025 Democratic Resilience in a Region Under Pressure: Lessons from Sierra Leone’s Post-Conflict Transition Against the backdrop of four successful coups in the Sahel between 2020 and 2023, this paper asks the most urgent question in African governance: how do some post-conflict states consolidate democracy while others slide back? Sierra Leone’s trajectory offers a compelling and underexamined answer. The 1996 Watershed In 1996, at only 32 years old, then-military Head of State Julius Maada Bio made a decision that defined Sierra Leone’s democratic trajectory: he organised multiparty elections and voluntarily handed power to the winner. In a region where military rulers rarely relinquish control, this act of democratic integrity was both exceptional and foundational. From Fragile State to UN Security Council The paper traces Sierra Leone’s path from post-conflict fragility — through the 1996 elections, the 1997 coup and restoration, the end of the civil war in 2002, and successive peaceful transfers of power — to its election to the UN Security Council in 2023 with 188 of 192 votes. It identifies institution-building, sustained investment in human capital, and consistent anti-corruption signalling as the three non-negotiable ingredients of democratic consolidation.

📄 Discussion Paper · Youth · Research · 2025 Youth Employment & the Demographic Dividend: Turning Africa’s Greatest Asset into Sustained Growth Africa’s youth population is its greatest asset — and its most urgent governance challenge. With up to a quarter of young Africans neither in education, employment nor training, and with youth-driven protest movements reshaping politics from Lagos to Nairobi, this paper examines what credible, large-scale youth employment strategy actually looks like. Sierra Leone’s Approach In November 2024, President Bio launched five flagship youth employment initiatives at a ceremony supported by UNDP and UNFPA, targeting 500,000 jobs for young Sierra Leoneans within five years — as one of the “big five game changers” in Sierra Leone’s Medium-Term National Development Plan 2024–2030. The paper evaluates these schemes against international benchmarks. ❝ “The youth are not mere recipients of progress. They are the key architects of our democracies.” — President Julius Maada Bio The Continental Blueprint Drawing on Nigeria’s NPower programme (500,000 youth employed), Kenya’s digital hubs, and Rwanda’s agricultural entrepreneurship schemes, the paper proposes a continental youth employment architecture anchored in five pillars: skills development, entrepreneurship finance, agricultural modernisation, digital economy access, and public service pathways.