The Team Leader for Invest Salone, Chukwu-Emeka Chikezie, has encouraged small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to be active members of their respective business membership organisations and prioritise shaping the business environment in Sierra Leone.
He made the plea to business owners while speaking at the launch of the World Bank’s Agro-Processing Competitiveness Project, an accelerator programme for SMEs in agribusiness in Sierra Leone. The event took place on 25 February 2020.
To improve businesses and investment, he challenged SMEs to overcome the collective problems affecting the private sector and highlighted that “the needed improvements in the investment climate will not come from international development partners; rather they should come from business owners in the private sector.”
The Team Leader emphasised that there is a need for the government of Sierra Leone, the private sector and international development partners to embed an effective public–private dialogue to build much-needed trust and to identify critical bottlenecks facing businesses that need to be addressed.
He went on to say that Invest Salone will work with the government to institutionalise effective public–private dialogue and ensure that reforms in investing and doing business in the country take place.
