“Access to internet should be a basic human right”: Minister Salima Bah on Sierra Leone’s tech ambition

When I spoke to Sierra Leone’s Minister of Communication, Technology, and Innovation, Salima Bah, last February, the ministry she led was less than a year old, and the country’s ambitions, though bold, were still largely on paper. “We are willing to learn how others have done it; we aren’t inventing the wheel,” she said at the time.

Eighteen months on, the country has walked the talk. In that time, the government has invested more than $132 million directly into technology and innovation, covering policy, infrastructure, and funding projects like the Universal Access Development Fund. The IMF forecasts report internet users have risen from 1.84 million in early 2023 to around 2.32 million in 2025. In June, the country unveiled West Africa’s first open-access 5G standalone network.

But for Bah, infrastructure is just the foundation.

“You can’t talk about technology or innovation if your infrastructure isn’t there,” she told me in our latest conversation. “But you can’t just say you’re setting up and use that as an excuse not to deliver. So we’ve been simultaneously rolling out and implementing initiatives.”

Still, the government’s tech ambition goes beyond infrastructure and digital service delivery. It’s underpinned by a broader vision: to position Sierra Leone as a regional hub for innovation.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What has changed since we last spoke? What has the journey been like for you personally?

A lot has definitely changed. I don’t know if it was clear in the first interview, but I was coming into a brand-new ministry. Some parts of the ministry existed in terms of communication, but technology and innovation were added to the mandate. And there were no structures in place within the institution to handle that. So a lot of work went into setting up the institution, developing strategies, roadmaps, and putting humans in place to lead the work.

It’s not the sexiest part of the job. It’s not what people talk about, but it’s critical. Because without that, as they say, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. That’s been really critical for us. But you can’t just say you’re setting up and use that as an excuse not to deliver. So we’ve been simultaneously rolling out and implementing initiatives.

Since then, we’ve hosted two annual tech summits. They’ve been critical because, for a long time, the government wasn’t part of creating a platform for the ecosystem. It was largely private sector-led. We wanted to create a big platform to bring everyone together and have strategic conversations about the ecosystem and push the government’s agenda.

We just concluded the second one a few months ago. And we could already see the progress both in the ecosystem and the nature of conversations. In communication, too, we’ve seen massive growth. For example, the launch of the Open Access 5G network. And when we talk about digital government, how government can leverage tech to deliver on the national development agenda, we’ve also seen significant progress across sectors.

Let’s talk about infrastructure, that’s the bedrock of enabling an ecosystem. What are some of the challenges and opportunities in expanding fibre connectivity?

You can’t talk about tech or innovation if your infrastructure is not there. For a long time, that’s what the government focused on. That’s why the ministry was only called the Ministry of Communication. The focus was on expanding infrastructure. Since 2018, we’ve seen an over 75% increase in fibre backbone penetration and international bandwidth capacity.

We’ve also improved resilience and redundancy by interconnecting with neighbouring countries like Guinea. We negotiated emergency bandwidth capacity allocation as part of that. In rural areas, the number of mobile sites has almost doubled since 2018. Huge government interest and investment have gone into that.

But the biggest challenge is financing. Infrastructure is cost-intensive. The government has put in financing, and so has the private sector and development partners. One lesson we learned from 2018 till now is the importance of creating an enabling environment for private sector participation. No government alone can do this.

One of the most significant partnerships we had was the decoupling and privatisation of the undersea fibre cable. It used to be managed by a government vehicle called the Sierra Leone Cable Limited, SALCAB. But managing and maintaining it was a challenge. The government took a hard decision to privatise it, an unpopular move at the time. But now, we’ve been vindicated. The private partner introduced professional standards, and the government now sees returns on the cable.

They’ve expanded the capacity from 90Gbps to over 500Gbps, increased the redundancy ring, built a metro network in Freetown, expanded into fintech, and launched OneMobile, a data-only mobile network on an open-access 5G infrastructure, the first in West Africa.

We’ve also been able to sustain three mobile operators, now even a fourth. For a population of 8 million, that’s a big deal. Other countries with similar or larger populations have only one or two operators. I think that’s a testament to the government policies when it comes to the private sector.

What is the government’s thinking behind its support for the tech ecosystem? What metrics are you using to measure impact?

At the last summit, the president did a fireside chat where he talked about this. People always ask why we’re pushing tech so much when we have so many other problems. He told a personal story, how, during his first term as a minister, he had to go back to school, and that’s when he first touched a computer. His classmates were finishing tasks in 10 minutes; it took him three hours. And he traced that back to the disadvantage of coming from a country where opportunities like that weren’t available for everybody. 

That lesson stuck with him: that if we want to develop as a nation, people must have access to technology. We have to invest in technology and innovation, because that’s the only way that we get to do that.

If you continuously become consumers, you’re just consuming technology, you’re consuming innovation, and then you know you’re getting the short end of the deal. He wants us to get to the point where we could also develop our solutions internally, and how we can be part of the global discussions. 

Access to mobile and internet services should no longer be seen as a privilege. Internet access should be a basic human right. Regardless of where citizens are in Sierra Leone, whether in the far-to-reach places or urban areas, they should have access to mobile and Internet services.

That’s why we’ve invested in projects like the Universal Access Development Fund. We use it to connect underserved areas where private sector investment alone doesn’t make sense.

We don’t just set up and walk away. We partner with private sector players who take over and operate the infrastructure. We measure impact by asking what changed after access was introduced: How has it affected education? Healthcare? Has e-commerce for farmers improved? Are healthcare workers using the internet to do research or communicate better?

We go beyond saying we connected 400,000 people. We ask: What’s the downstream impact on education, healthcare, agriculture, e-commerce, social welfare, and access to information?

What’s the current status of Felei Tech City , particularly the plan to attract investment, and ensure local players benefit?

I know for certain we’re starting construction this year. I think we’re just waiting for the rains to die down slightly. We’ve already secured commitments from the private sector to do certain constructions on there.

One of the fundamental things that we’re trying to design within this space is how do we design and develop the framework in a way that it’s not just a government-led initiative. As a government, where we want to play within this is just to be a conductor, and then to create the opportunity for the private sector to come in. That’s why we invested a lot. Through our partnership with the African Development Bank, we’re able to secure partnership and funding with them to look at how we design and develop a model of how we govern and manage, and operate that space.

We’ve studied other models: Rwanda’s Kigali Innovation City, Nigeria, Cape Town, and Konza in Kenya. But we understand that Sierra Leone has a different context in terms of who we are. There are so many factors that you need to take into play: economic size, human population, and geographical position. We can’t copy-paste. We’re hosting a roundtable soon to validate our model with local and regional partners.

We want to validate the model and design that we have and that we believe could work. Because if at the end of the day, you want all these people to be part of it, they also have to be part of the initial design and feel as if they have ownership. The idea of the Felei Tech City is not just about infrastructure and building a space. It’s about creating an ecosystem. 

And already, we’re seeing some indications. For example, we hosted the regional Startup World Cup in Sierra Leone for the first time. Startups from all over West Africa came to compete, and a Sierra Leonean startup won; they’ll now represent West Africa in Silicon Valley. That’s what we’re trying to build.

We now have more forward-looking, progressive-minded people in government who are enabling the ecosystem from a policy-making standpoint. Can you speak on policies in the context of Sierra Leone? What other reforms or policies are you working on to further support the ecosystem?

Policy is definitely important. Government must think about strategic direction and steer the ecosystem. Every country has to decide: What role do we want to play in the global space?

For Sierra Leone, size matters because it’s a factor even for our startups. I always actually draw the analogy with Sierra Leone and Nigeria. A startup in Nigeria can market just for Nigeria; it has 200 million people to sell to. But a startup in Sierra Leone can’t afford to do that. At the very start, you have to think about scalability outside of Sierra Leone. That’s the same thing with the government as well. We understand that we can’t develop policies and think about innovation and entrepreneurship in a limited way.

We’re leveraging our Mano River Union position, our open borders, and the fact that we’re English-speaking. From as far back as 2018, our National Innovation and Digital Strategy positioned Sierra Leone as an AI lab. It’s a small document, but it’s been our bible. It was ahead of its time.

Our innovation and entrepreneurship policy is built around three pillars: attract, thrive, and retain. We attract ideas and startups; help them thrive through policies and support; and retain them by encouraging them to stay rooted even as they scale.

We’ve looked at countries like Singapore and Ireland, small countries that used their size as an advantage. Companies looking to expand into the region can set up here first. That’s how we’re thinking about our policies.

There is no innovation without people. How are you building Sierra Leone’s technical talent pipeline?

Talent is a massive factor. The last summit focused heavily on skills development. We ran over 35 intro-to-tech courses and a job fair. Some participants were already in tech, but many were just curious. The goal was to spark interest.

Since 2018, there’s been a significant shift in formal education. We now have more institutions coming up that are tech-focused. We now have around 8 or 9 tech-focused tertiary institutions, compared to just one or two before. And even within the primary basic education level, we see schools, like all primary schools, secondary schools, now completely focus on tech. We’ve also revised the curriculum and made sure that we enhance the STEM program in our national curriculum.

Outside of formal education, there’s been a boom in self-taught talent. People are switching from law or accounting to software development and data science. We conducted a national digital skills assessment to understand where we are and where global opportunities lie.

We’re focusing on five key skill sets where we think Sierra Leone can be globally competitive. We want to invest heavily in those areas, develop a large pool of talent, and become known for it. The idea is: if someone wants to hire great data scientists, they should think of Sierra Leone.

Digital governance is a very key part of how the government is changing its thinking around tech. What progress has been made so far in terms of making government services more accessible to people, and what are the next steps for digital governance in Sierra Leone?

As a government, our job is to deliver services for people, whether it’s passports. driver’s license, or birth certificates. That means we have to think about how to improve that process for citizens, making it more efficient and effective for them. We prioritise the public sector because it’s a foundation for everything. We can’t talk about any aspect or any sector of any other sector of government if we don’t improve the public sector. Every other sector has to deal with the public sector.

There are two major initiatives we are really proud of because they’re both homegrown. One is an HR Hub that we’re in the process of rolling out. One of the biggest problems our government has is accounting for people. A key feature of the HR Hub is that it geolocates attendance and lets supervisors see who’s reporting in real time. The platform has digitised how the government manages our biggest resource—people, how we manage our processes, reducing paper-based processes, producing more transparency and accountability.

The other initiative is another platform called WanGov, which we intend to be a single window platform for all government services. Citizens can visit a single platform, apply online, pay using different payment options, and use the national postal service to receive documents.

The hottest topic in African and global tech right now is AI. How is Sierra Leone thinking about AI?

In Sierra Leone, just like everybody else, we are all grappling with two things: how to leverage AI and how to limit the risks.

First of all, we’re very keen to look at regionally. That’s why we’re very happy to support the AI council that was just launched in Rwanda by Smart Africa. Because we also feel AI is one of those areas where, as a region, we have to come together. 

We are all facing the challenge of our infrastructure; we’re all in potentially the same boat when it comes to AI. The challenge and risk is that AI systems and solutions are being developed globally, but without our data. Those solutions shape investment, security, and economic decisions, and we can’t be left out.

Locally, we’re conducting an AI Readiness Assessment, looking at infrastructure, policy, data governance, human capacity, and the startup ecosystem. That will inform our national strategy. 

We’re working with the World Bank to organise an AI Innovation Challenge to identify AI-driven solutions in the local ecosystem. We are also partnering with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to look at how we can develop an AI training program within the government. We believe public sector workers should use ChatGPT to make their work develop faster. 

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