By Karamoh Kabba, Freetown.
The paradox that Sierra Leone is the poorest country in the world despite its abundant mineral resources is an inconvenient truth that is about to change.
Zainab Bangura, the minister for Foreign Affairs, on February 10, 2007, took great pride in introducing George Soros to members of the media at a press conference at the Bintumani seaside hotel in Freetown.
According to Forbes magazine Mr. Soros is the 80th-richest man in the world with a net worth of 8.5 billion dollars.
“We have here special guests who have come to visit us. We have Mr. George Soros who is actually the head of the Open Society Institute. Aryeh Neier the president of the society in New York, and Nana Dakor the executive director of the Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA), an affiliate of Open Society,” Hon Bangura stated.
The moderator, minister for Presidential Affairs, Hon. Alpha Kanu, also spoke of Mr. Soros as “a well-known venture capitalist in the world and a great philanthropist.” “This is a great occasion for Sierra Leone this morning,” he added.
Before opening the floor for comments and questions, Hon. Kanu also expressed great satisfaction in the fact that Sierra Leone is now able to attract such a great personality.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Soros stated: “I am pleased to be here. This is an exceptional opportunity for Sierra Leone.”
He spoke of his involvement in what he called the “big change” in the former Soviet Empire that, according to him, created the “big opportunity” to become a philanthropist. He said he was in Sierra Leone to assist a nation that has held “Free and fair elections, a process that is now leading to a democratic transition and we want to help build a free and open society.”
Mr. Kanu noted that the world has 3.5 billion people living in countries which depend on oil, most of whom are the poorest on earth.
“There is a shifting of blame from government to the companies [extractive companies] and from the companies to government,” he said. “The people are not benefiting from the minerals,” he noted, citing Sierra Leone.
He further explained that the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITA) was formed by the West to ensure that the people benefit from their mineral resources.
When pressed on by members of the press to offer specifics on how he would help the people of Sierra Leone, Mr. Soros stated that he does not expect just to give out money. That money will not solve the problems of the world. And that his organization would, instead, help this previously war torn West African nation, in the areas of the extractive mineral industry, transparency policy formulation and the development of civil societies.
He further maintained that the natural resources belong to the people and that very often the rulers use the resources to benefit themselves which creates what he refers to as “the resource curse.”
Mr. Soros added: “I don’t need to explain to you what is resource curse. You have suffered much from it in the recent past,” he said.
Mr. Soros further told the audience of mostly reporters that he intends to help Sierra Leone in collaboration with the UNDP by creating a capacity-building fund that will help the people of Sierra Leone with intellectual capacity building through fellowship funding.
He explained that the programme would help qualified Sierra Leoneans who want to return home to work in the interest of the people as opposed to the World Bank and IMF expatriates who, according to him, “have their own agenda that often works in the interest of the governments and institutions they represent.”
“This is the point; this is what... developing economies often find difficulty grappling with. But coming from a world-renowned financial speculator, political activist and philanthropist that would likely drive the message through,” said Lamin, a concerned citizen after the press conference.
Zainab Bangura was obviously very proud to achieve the singular feat of bringing the multi-billionaire to Sierra Leone.
Her sense of satisfaction was so obvious that a reporter picked up on it and asked her, “Why are you beaming?” and she answered, “I am beaming because it took us four and half years to invite George to come here.”
She went on to explain: “When George speaks, the world listens. He is the man that predicted the recent recession; you must have seen it on CNN. He had a very good discussion with government and he is carrying a good impression of us. His opinion will help open many doors for us rather than us going about knocking on doors.”
Mr. Soros confirmed this by admitting that he was lucky to have listened to president Ernest Koroma’s ambitious plans. “I was able to listen to the president and hear his ambitious plans, which I am sure he would be able to deliver.” But he also warned that he is never a “bed fellow” with any government.
He explained that his support is not unconditional although he may have liked what he heard. He observed that governments, once in power, tend to do differently from what they originally set out to do, citing the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia which he referred to as “a bad experience” for him.
He also told his audience: “I was quite impressed with the leader at first,” referring to the Georgian case, further stating that his organization apparently became the main critic of the government when the ruler became autocratic. He however expressed some amount of optimism in the leaders of Sierra Leone when he said, “I don’t expect such in Sierra Leone.”
Soros said his organization will soon help government with the formulation of transparent mining policies. In his own words, he is a “political-philanthropist.”
The deputy minister for Trade and Industry, who, since her appointment demonstrates unfaltering commitment to the building and encouraging of a strong private sector economy, which she says “would help to reduce the growing youth unemployment in Sierra Leone” found an opportunity at the conference to interject her ministry’s agenda into the equation:
“Mine is a commentary as opposed to a question,” she began. “As a financial speculator your reflexivity, financial marketing, and economic theory resulted in huge financial profit for you in 1992,” she remarked.
“When Britain failed to adhere to all European financial market trends, you bought 10 billion pounds that made one 1 billion pounds profit on black Wednesday from the Bank of England for which you were dubbed ‘the man who broke the Bank of England,” she said with comic effect.
“We welcome you along with your ingenious financial speculation skills and unparalleled philanthropy to Sierra Leone,” she told Mr. Soros.
“On a serious note though, we will not mind to dub you the man who built the Bank of Sierra Leone,” she said and received a round of applause.
When asked whether he supports Obama or Clinton, Soros said he supports Obama from the time he announced his candidature. But the chairman of the Open Society foundation made a follow-up to the answer, clarifying that Soros “supports Obama as a citizen, not as the chairman of his foundation.”
On the slipping away of democracy in Cameroon and Chad despite the activities of OSIEA in both countries, Soros(photo) said he knew nothing about the two African countries. The executive director of OSIEA however told the audience that the organization could do more in both places without government constraints, stating that the organization does not work through government in both countries. She said that there must be the willingness of the countries to embrace civil societies and work with the organization.
Hon. Kanu, in his closing remarks, lauded Mr. Soros’ intellectual capacity building plan by referring to the ancient Chinese saying: “When you teach a man how to fish, you feed him for life. When you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. We are looking forward to you to teach us how to fish,.” He then wished Soros bon voyage.
An entry on the Open Society Institute’s website has this to say about George Soros:
A global financier and philanthropist, George Soros is the founder and chairman of a network of foundations that promote, among other things, the creation of open, democratic societies based upon the rule of law, market economies, transparent and accountable governance, freedom of the press, and respect for human rights.
Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930. His father was taken prisoner during World War I and eventually fled from captivity in Russia to reunite with his family in Budapest. Soros was thirteen years old when Hitler’s Wehrmacht seized Hungary and began deporting the country’s Jews to extermination camps. In 1946, as the Soviet Union was taking control of the country, Soros attended a conference in the West and defected. He emigrated in 1947 to England, supported himself by working as a railroad porter and a restaurant waiter, graduated in 1952 from the London School of Economics, and obtained an entry-level position with an investment bank.
Philosophy
At the London School of Economics, Soros became acquainted with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas on open society had a profound influence on his intellectual development. Specifically, Soros’s experience of Nazi and Communist rule attracted him to Popper’s critique of totalitarianism, The Open Society and Its Enemies, in which he maintained that societies can only flourish when they allow democratic governance, freedom of expression, a diverse range of opinion, and respect for individual rights.
Finance
In 1956, Soros immigrated to the United States. He worked as a trader and analyst until 1963. During this period, Soros adapted Popper’s ideas to develop his own "theory of reflexivity," a set of ideas that seeks to explain the relationship between thought and reality, which he used to predict, among other things, the emergence of financial bubbles. Soros began to apply his theory to investing and concluded that he had more talent for trading than for philosophy. In 1967 he helped establish an offshore investment fund; and in 1973 he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the first hedge funds, through which he accumulated a vast fortune.
Comments