Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the president of Sierra Leone, said in yesterday morning's World Leaders Forum address that his country has achieved peace, but that prosperity has proved more elusive.
Kabbah, the last of several heads of state to appear over the last two weeks at the World Leaders Forum, spoke to a half-filled audience about the challenges that lay ahead for his war-ravaged country, after a brutal ten-year civil war.
Kabbah began his presidential campaign in 1996, returning from working for the United Nations at a time when his country was still plagued by violence. He based his campaign and presidency on establishing peace, culminating eventually in the 2002 peace treaty with the Revolutionary United Front that finally ended the war.
"I inherited a severely battered country," Kabbah said.
Now that U.N. and government troops have helped stabilize Sierra Leone, Kabbah is working to move Sierra Leone closer to reaching the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, a series of objectives designed to help alleviate extreme poverty worldwide as well as the program that was the focus of this year's World Leader's Forum.
"On January 18th, Sierra Leoneans shared a sigh of relief, for that was the day that we ended the conflict and [moved forward in] reaching the Millennium Development goals," he said.
Kabbah linked the advancement towards these primarily development goals with ensuring national security. "We are constantly reminding ourselves that lack of development breeds conflict and insecurity," said Kabbah.
According to the 2005 UN Development Index, Sierra Leone was the second least-developed nation for whom information was available. After the violence of the last decade, four-fifths of Sierra Leone's population lived on less than one dollar a day.
Now the country has seen a slowly increasing gross domestic product and hopes to become an exporter of agricultural products, Kabbah said.
In looking toward the future, Kabbah stressed that he is focusing on the country's youth.
"Unemployment and disadvantaged youth provided a recruiting pool for the rebels," he said.
Kabbah said he hopes to improve education, health care, and employment, as well as continuing rehabilitation efforts for those who had been conscripted into the rebel group as children.
Kabbah ended his talk with a message of hope and determination. "The path to peace and development can be rocky. However, with the confidence, the people's will, determination, and the grace of the Almighty, one is bound to succeed."