After approximately 20 years of visiting and working in Sierra Leone we have witnessed a dramatic change in that impoverished country.

In 1984 Sierra Leone was suffering as a result of bad management and corrupt government.

The government had bankrupted the country to host the OAU meeting.

The leone was worth about 176 to the American dollar.

It has continued to slide to where it is now about 2300 to the US buck

In 1991 a rebel faction under Foday Sankoh began a brutal attack on their fellow Sierra Leoneans.

The RUF committed the most horrific atrocities that would defy human imagination and proceeded to acquire control of the Eastern diamond fields.

This Commonwealth country held it's first democratic elections in 30 years in 1996 and elected President Alhaji Tejan Kabba and his SLLP party to govern the country.

President Kabba was reelected in 2002 for a second term and is doing well in leading his country out of more than 10 years of war and destruction.

The next few years will be a test for the International Community to help make this state which is at the bottom of the Human Development Index a success story and a model for all of Africa.